


The Bullet in the Gun That is Faster Than Yours

by PaintedElectric



Category: The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Doubt, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27989820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedElectric/pseuds/PaintedElectric
Summary: Lee is unraveling in plain sight and the only one to notice is the one who has known him longest, but he is reluctant to admit his fears and weaknesses.  Britt is torn between doing his job well or seeing that his friend does not become the next casualty of their trade.  The walls are closing in on the little village and the men who try to protect it.
Relationships: Lee & Britt
Comments: 13
Kudos: 7





	1. The Sound of Hooves

**Author's Note:**

> To those who have not read any of my other works: I both loathe and am terrible at summaries.
> 
> I don’t anticipate that this will be a long story as I'm jotting down a quick fic while I wait for my new laptop to be delivered since my current other story (GOT readers, my laptop died and my files are saved on a device I don't have access to, I'm so sorry) is unavailable to me right now. The Magnificent Seven (1960) film was the one from which I wrote my very first bit of fanfiction when I was about 11 years old and decided it was high time I committed an updated version to this website. Mostly follows the beats of the film with obvious changes, given that the minor roles of Lee and Britt are brought out while other characters that I wasn’t a big fan of are pushed to the back.
> 
> Picks up just after the first confrontation with the Seven and Calvera.

**LEE**

The thundering of dozens of hooves faded into the distance, both to the left and right, but his heartbeat matched the cadence as he waited for what would be the all-clear. When he saw the rising dust begin to settle, he relaxed his posture against the wall that had been his sole cover for the past three minutes. At least six horses had ridden by him, close enough to kick him in the head if he had leaned out, but somehow the riders had completely missed him, for which he was both grateful and ashamed. What a spectacular way to die that would have been, kneeling cornered and petrified in the dirt without ever having drawn his weapon.

Breathing an inward sigh of relief that did not extend to the trembling in his hands, he stood up, beating the dust from the knees of his pants. He removed his pistol from its holster, as it was better to be seen with it drawn as if he still expected danger than for it to be tucked away.

He had to start walking while the street was relatively empty to continue the ruse that he had taken an active part in this skirmish. Across the way he saw O’Reilly pointing his rifle to the north still but to his right Britt was emptying the hollow shells from his pistol whilst watching Lee. Britt made a sweeping gesture over his body as if to ask, _You hit_ , to which Lee shook his head in response.

No, he was not hit by anything except cowardice, but it might as well have been a bullet for how it left him feeling in the aftermath.

Across the flatland, Vin was riding back after having given chase to the fleeing bandits but the others were gathering in front of the bell tower. The villagers came next, some sporting bloody clothes, though if it was their blood or another’s was hard to say just yet. Given the excited expressions to be seen all around, it would appear that despite their wounds, they were in a celebratory mood. They had successfully driven out their oppressors and the elation following that realization was enough to push any other thoughts from their mind.

Hats flew into the air, there were victorious whoops, neighbor embraced neighbor, but Lee had a nagging and disturbing gut feeling that their victory was not going to be so easily won and extremely short-lived.

He assigned himself the task of helping to gather bodies of the fallen and Harry enlisted to aid him. Grabbing a horse apiece, they set about to combing the paths leading out of the village. It was dirty, sweaty work, but it helped to settle Lee’s nerves by keeping his mind occupied on nothing but the next body…the next body…

And to his immense relief, the only bodies to find were those of the opposition. Not one farmer had been dealt a mortal blow. 

After returning from the fourth trip out the back way, Lee and Harry deposited the last of their haul in the mass grave that was being dug by Britt, Vin, and O’Reilly along with seven or eight villagers just outside the north entrance. Lee took up a spare spade and climbed down to join them. Within ten minutes he felt a blister form and then pop on his left hand, as he was purposefully favoring it to keep his right in pristine condition.

When the pit was deep enough to fit all eleven bandits, they climbed out and began to toss the bodies unceremoniously into the churned soil. The corpses had been stripped of their effects and anything useful, as they would not be needing them and they had taken that and more from the men who now buried them. Quick work was made of putting the uncovered dirt back in its place and by the time the last shovelfull had been padded down, the women and children had been brought out of hiding to participate in the celebration.

After a quick wash up and a moment or two to air out the sweat from their clothes, Lee and the others found that the cantina had been made up in their honor to thank them for their service and Lee was more than uncomfortable with the spotlight he felt he had been placed in. He didn’t take kindly to praise and thanks, preferring to collect his bounty and depart without a word, yet he had to stand there with the rest of them as Hilario and Sotero wrung each of their hands individually, blessed them, and extended eternal gratitude.

When all that nonsense was over with, Lee took a table at the back of the cantina and reached for the nearest jug as Britt joined him. He wanted something much stronger than water, but it was far too early to be indulging and he made it a point of keeping his wits about him during daylight hours. For now, he could settle with nothing but a tin cup full of water which he clinked against Britt’s to toast to a job well done on everyone’s part except his own. Had he been a guilt-ridden man, he might have said something apologetic to the few villagers sporting wounds from bandits who Lee might have killed to spare the villagers those wounds but his conscience would not allow him to take the fall for no greater foul.

The water tasted like ash, a forewarning to what he had heard many a gunmen refer to as the beginning of the end. When the fear was too great and the odds to high, when spinelessness took over, taste was the first to go. There was no taste to sustenance, no way to quench the thirst. Then it was only a matter of time before his reflexes failed him and he would truly be a dead man walking.

“Refilled your gunbelt already?” asked Britt, nodding at the fact that Lee only had six bullets missing from his belt when it should have been more if Lee had been an active participant in the battle. Those six bullets in question were still sitting comfortably and ready in his sidearm.

Shrugging off the question, Lee answered, “Just adamant about keeping it full when I can.”

“Y’know, before the dust settled, I saw you crouching there, thought you’d been hit, but you weren’t. So you froze,” said Britt, and it was not a question.

“I suppose I did.” When Britt made no reply, Lee prompted, “Was there going to be a point to that statement, or did you just want to hear me admit it?”

“I wanna know why you think you did. If you can admit it, you know why.”

“I know why, but I’m not up for sharing, and you ought to respect that.”

Leaning closer and dropping his voice so as to not invite others in on the delicate conversation, Britt took on a much more dangerous tone as his eyebrows became a straight line in absolute seriousness. “What you choose to do with your skill is your business, makes no nevermind to me, but the second that puts other lives at risk, it becomes my business. I know you can fight; I’ve seen it, and you came here for that purpose so either step up or step out. There’s no room for idlers on the battlefield.”

Lee knew Britt better than to believe that this was in any way a threat but more of a heavily weighted suggestion, as Britt was the best gunman Lee knew and the man took his craft seriously. If there was one thing Britt did not tolerate, it was a man who deliberately stepped aside to invite further violence and if one of the villagers had lost their lives because of Lee’s incompetence, Lee would not have put it past Britt to punch him in the face for it.

At the same time, Lee did not appreciate being lectured to like an unruly child who had to have things slowly explained to them. He knew why he dropped out of the fight, knew it might happen again, but he had no control over whether or not it happened. This was the one thing in life he excelled in and the fear of losing that ability was absolutely terrifying for him to consider. He _wanted_ to be in the thick of it all as he had once been but every part of his body fought against him when he tried. Everything from his brain to his trigger finger were in a full-scale riot in protest against him which brought the sweat to his hands which then led to the accelerated breathing and the rushing heartbeat. He was one step shy of dissolving into a full-blown panic and was certain he would have lost his head completely if the fight had lasted much longer.

The contemplative look Britt was giving him now suggested the former was trying to read him and Lee very much preferred not to be read by anyone, no matter the acquaintance. 

“If it happens again, you’ll be the first to know when you find my body,” said Lee in a manner he hoped was abrasive enough to make the other gunman back down.

“I’m not keen on it and I don’t think it’ll come to that anyhow.”

“It will,” Lee assured him. “The fighting isn’t over. There’ll be more of it along with more blood spilt on both sides because I don’t believe for one second that Calvera would give up that easily. He likes himself too much. You heard him; he enjoyed hearing himself talk, talking _at_ people. He’s a man who has to have the last word—“

A bullet struck the stone above Britt’s head and both he and Lee upended the table, diving behind it to take cover as they heard an additional round of shots along with the report of the first.

 _Spoke too soon_.

Villagers scrambled for cover as O’Reilly hefted his shotgun to waist height and returned fire. Somewhere to Lee’s left Chico was shouting in Spanish at a gaggle of boys to seek shelter as he ran on Chris’s orders to herd inside anyone left outdoors who did not have a gun.

Lee observed the scuff mark made by the bullet on the wall above him and mentally traced the trajectory to pinpoint its origin. From this angle, it had come from northwest, in the hills behind the bell tower and his guess proved to be right as another shot just missed Vin’s heels and the cowboy threw himself over the cantina counter.

“Too close,” muttered Britt.

Chris, who was taking shelter behind a stone column, snapped to get their attention and made a _round ‘em up_ gesture. Lee nodded and relayed it to Chico who was coming back up the way in a crouched position to present less of a target of himself.

“Now,” called Chris and the seven of them sprinted for the wall positioned just over fifteen feet from the broken archway leading up into the hills. Each of them fired two shots to make the bandits seek cover of their own and then one by one dropped down behind the wall, peering and squinting against the late afternoon sun to try and get a glimpse of a light reflection off a rifle in the trees.

“They’re way up there. At least three, maybe four,” said O’Reilly. “And that damned sun is at their backs so they have perfect aim.”

“We’re shootin’ blind, ain’t no chance in hell of takin’ ‘em if we can’t see,” agreed Vin who had lost his hat during his dive at the cantina.

“So we go up after ‘em,” said Harry. “They can stake out until the morning and pick us off one by one, maybe have us pinned long enough for Calvera to come back fully rested.”

“They’ve got two ways out if they’re where I think they are,” Britt observed.

Chris made an executive decision. “Then we cut them off, take them by surprise and drive them down toward the rest. Vin, hold here with Harry and Chico and send men to cover the front and back. Britt, take Lee up the left. O’Reilly, with me.”

Repositioning themselves along the wall to split into their teams, they looked to Chris for the signal. More gunfire struck the wall just over Lee’s head and he craned his neck lower until it was uncomfortable, hand resting on Britt’s back as he waited to feel the latter move. Harry stood up to offer cover fire with his Winchester and Britt sprang up with Lee just behind him. They bent almost double as they ran for the cover of trees.

Britt was light and silent as he moved, an impressive feat for someone of his size, and he was therefore the perfect stalking companion. Just as it had been the last time the two of them had gone on a covert mission, Britt took point and Lee guarded the rear as they made their way up into the hills. Lee surprised himself at how quiet he managed to be when he was starting to feel the cold sweat coming back on. It was going to be a challenge keeping himself in check when all he wanted to do was turn right back around and remove himself from the situation entirely.

But as Britt picked a well hidden spot to stake out, he convinced himself that this was different and more to his advantage. They would not be flushing the bandits out; they were cutting them off. The men would ride straight across their path without ever knowing they were there and Lee need never even expose himself to a bullet’s pathway.

“I’ll take front and back,” said Britt and Lee’s pride stung that even now, the other man thought Lee incapable of taking on any greater odds. He was right, of course, but it did Lee’s confidence no good to have him _think_ he was right. At least Britt had the decency to not tell him to be calm and steady since Lee would have taken that as the final insult.

The minutes dragged on and anticipation gave way to impatience as they waited for the telltale shot that would send the bandits down their way. Lee flexed his dominant hand fingers and even to him, the sound of the leather stretching was deafening in the silence. There was no breeze to speak of, no birds making their song, and so the slightest disturbance seemed magnified to Lee. Ever thankful though he was for his gloves in helping to combat the perspiration that always ran between his fingers, he was rather annoyed at them at the moment.

He envied men like Britt and Chris who were quick to the draw despite having large, clumsy-looking hands that were deft and agile and never once failed them. Lee’s had failed him far too often for him to even consider going naked-handed into a battle from now until his dying day. Most assumed they were merely an accessory to his well-to-do attire when in reality they were a hindrance in nearly everything he did apart from fighting.

Lee was picking a nonexistent speck of dust from the barrel of his pistol when he heard a lone shot from a rifle. Praying that the shot had belonged to O’Reilly, he pivoted where he stood to face the path all the while making sure he was still properly concealed. Heavy footfalls of hooves trying to make their way through treacherous terrain grew louder by the second and Lee watched the trail ahead to be able to identify the middle man and time the attack appropriately.

Three heads bent low over their horses broke over the hilltop and fell into line to navigate down the narrow path. Britt followed the frontman with his pistol, preparing, waiting…

Lee marked his target, a man with a black bandana covering the lower half of his face. But he was riding too fast and Lee wasn’t prepared for the speed at which the riders came down the hill. At the last second he switched his aim for the horse and struck its hindquarters. The poor beast bucked high and sent its rider flying forward where he just managed to roll aside to avoid being trampled by the other two. Britt’s bullet found its mark in the first bandit’s back but the third kept going.

“Take him!” Britt hollered.

Lee was closer, he had the better aim, and he had to make this shot count even though Britt had called the kill. Britt had not handed over the shot to Lee out of a need to cater to Lee’s self-confidence but because he did not have a clear shot. So Lee stepped out of the bushes, lining up his sights, picking out the smallest target to ensure his shot would still strike deadly if he missed his mark. Sweat was about to drop down into his eyeball, his nose itched, his stance was unsteady on the uneven ground…

A shot, a report, and the bandit fell from his horse.

 _Not completely useless yet_. It was a small saving grace, but Lee was pleased to find that he could still fire at another human being and not try to take the easy way out by shooting at their mount—

“Lee, at your feet!”

Caught up in his minor victory, Lee had completely put aside all thought of the first man to fall from his horse and now saw that man raising his pistol directly at Lee’s face. Lee’s trigger finger acted of its own accord and he had fired off three rounds when he felt something white hot cut across his head, just above his ear. He fired his last round purely out of reaction and stumbled into the trees as he felt blood trickling down his cheek and jaw.

He slapped one hand to the wound, hoping the leather from his glove would sop up some of the blood. Britt slid down the rocky path to where Lee was leaning against a tree trunk for support and ensured the bandit was dead before pulling Lee’s hand away to assess the damage. A few short seconds of prodding at the bullet’s bloody trail engraved in Lee’s skin and he shook his head in disbelief.

“Half an inch to the left and you’d be down in the dirt with him.” He measured the graze and showed Lee the length of it: almost two inches from tip to tip. “Took off a few eyebrow hairs and delicate skin and just missed your ear. You were lucky.”

Britt offered Lee a bandana to hold to his wound and Lee chuckled somewhat dryly at his friend’s observation. Yes, Lee was lucky, and that luck was about to run out. He was an excellent marksman and a true artist with his pistol, but if he couldn’t guard his own back, his skills would be for naught and he had had too many near-fatal brushes with luck to think it would favor him much longer.

He holstered his weapon, humiliated that it had taken him four rounds to convince him that his opponent was dead when he only needed one. He should have only needed one, but he allowed himself to be easily distracted and forgetful and it had almost cost him everything. Had it not been for Britt’s warning, he would not be alive to be contemplating any of this.

He was slipping, and fast.


	2. Past and Present Demons

**BRITT**

Lee was something of a subject of great interest when they returned to the village as the men gathered to ask him how he had sustained his injury, if he had killed both of his targets, if he had experienced worse injuries than this. To spare him the excess attention, Britt had O’Reilly regale the villagers while Chris took Lee aside in their shared common area to further examine and patch up the wound. As with all of them, Chris could stitch up small wounds as needed since the skill came with the territory. For men in a line of work such as them, it was imperative to know how to tend to your own wounds as well as the wounds of others and since Chris felt largely responsible for putting Lee in a position to be shot at, he took over the cleanup process.

With nothing more than a slight wince, Lee was a model patient as Chris held a lantern up to the wound and began to clean it. “Does it hurt?”

“It did when I got shot.”

“You’re lucky.”

“So I’ve been told.”

As the man who could claim to have known Lee second longest and nowhere near as long as Britt, Chris undoubtedly picked up on Lee’s reluctance to share anything other than he already had about the encounter. Harry, however, did not have subtlety as a strong suit, and as he settled into a seat beside Lee, he nudged Lee’s chair jokingly.

“He’s just sour because it’s a mark on his otherwise perfect face.”

“Hardly,” said Lee between his teeth as Chris applied boiled water on a cloth to the wound to sop off any excess blood and clean off his cheek.

“There’ll be a scar but once it grows back, your hair will cover most of it,” said Harry good naturedly. Britt didn’t have the heart to tell him that scarring was the least of Lee’s concerns but Lee used the last of his tactfulness to humor Harry.

“That’s a very comforting thought.”

“They drew first blood on us so when and if they come back, we’ll be out for blood with a vengeance,” Harry promised.

“That’s you finished,” said Chris as he stepped back to examine his handiwork. He had applied a patch of cloth to the fine line of missing flesh and then tied a further strip of the material around Lee’s head to hold the patch in place for the next several hours. “If you feel up to it, I would eat something.”

Britt passed a cloth of toasted corn toward Lee along with a heat-treated clay cup of water but Lee bypassed the water and reached instead for the jug of wine. He uncorked the jug with his teeth in a very uncharacteristically crude manner and then took a long, hearty pull from it. By the swishing sound inside, Lee had just downed a quarter of the jug’s contents and was mid-swig when they were joined by O’Reilly, Vin, and Chico, the last of whom pulled up a seat beside Lee and eagerly waited for him to finish his drink to get a look at his injury.

“What a narrow miss,” said the boy, regarding Lee in awe.

Though Lee had no cause to dislike the kid, he was not overly fond of him since he hero worshipped the lot of them and neither Lee nor Britt approved of boys and young men finding murder to be something in which one took pride. They were here because they had a gift, a reputation, but Britt would rather have never known that he had such skill in killing men than to be here as the subject of admiration from the likes of Chico.

“Stop starin’, kid,” said O’Reilly. “Nothin’ to see anyway.”

Lee jerked his head appreciatively in O’Reilly’s direction but Chico still had questions aplenty.

“How close was he when he shot you? Britt said you emptied your gun in him. How much skin did the bullet take off?”

“Not as much as I will if you don’t leave ‘im alone,” said Harry. “C’mon, kid, he’s probably got a splittin’ headache and you’re not helping. A fly in his ear right now, that’s what you are. You want somethin’ to do, go give those supplies to the villagers and replenish bullets all around.”

Chico was on the verge of protesting when Britt gave a slight, almost nonexistent cough and then stared the boy down when their eyes met. Chico respected authority when it came from someone whose skill he had seen firsthand and so Britt had a leg up on Harry in that regard. With a slight pout to his lip, Chico took the three gunbelts, two rifles, and one shotgun in his arms and excused himself from their company.

“I’m not sayin’ his heart’s not in the right place, but he can be a bit much. Most of us know that,” said Harry when Chico had gone. Apparently he felt like he had been too harsh on him when in actuality Chico had left on Britt’s account, not because of anything Harry had said. However, Britt had heard Chico’s tantrum at the border town when he was still halfway up the street and had been filled in on it later by Harry so he knew that Chico could indeed be a bit much.

“I think he’ll survive,” said Vin.

“Think I went too far?” Harry asked Lee for reassurance.

“Not at all,” said Lee, tipping the jug to his lips once more. As the others gathered around the table to eat a quick and cold dinner of rice and tortillas, Lee’s gaze gradually drifted off into oblivion until an explosion could have happened in front of him and he would not have taken notice. His face became ruddier with every sip of wine but to his credit, he remained upright in his seat with almost no swaying at all. It was quite possible that he was too lost in his own mind and whatever images had made him seize up during the battle today to care about anything but the jug in his hands.

Britt remained perched on the edge of his seat to leap up and catch him if it appeared that Lee was going to topple over but when Lee finally stood up a good hour later, he did so almost entirely on his own with only a moment of clutching his seat back to steady him.

“You off to bed?” asked Harry.

“To bed, yes. Sleep, no,” came Lee’s slightly slurred speech but Britt was astounded that any sound managed to come out at all. He would have thought Lee was well beyond words at this point in his drunkenness.

Lee’s pace was staggered just enough that he had to take measured steps but not to the point where he was incoherent and unaware of where he was going. Once he had gone, Harry shook his head as if he disapproved.

“He’d better slow down or we’ll find him in the street tomorrow morning. Didn’t know he was that deep into the jug already.”

“It’ll pass right through him,” said Britt. “He’ll be up vomiting in two hours.”

“Lightweight, eh?”

“He’s earned it, after today. And even if his head aches to the point where he can’t open his eyes during daylight, he’ll be there tomorrow if we need him.”

“I can vouch for that,” said Chris, and then left them to attend his turn at guard duty. O’Reilly and Vin tapered off to their own devices, leaving only Britt and Harry to while away their time. It was a bit early yet to turn in but Britt could think of little else he could be doing to be productive.

Harry offered him a cigar but Britt declined. He was the self-professed most uninteresting gunman of the bunch in that he did not partake in any pastimes that normally were associated with his sort. No drinking, no gambling, no smoking, no whoring. He cleaned his weapons to the point of obsession, read when he had time, and slept when he didn’t. It was the envy of many other men that he could fall asleep so quickly in nearly any position at any location but it was more out of exhaustion than habit. He did not sleep well during night hours, as his demons were prone to putting in a visit when the lights went out.

Apparently Harry did not sleep much at night either, for he brought out a very worn set of cards and slapped them on the table. “Try your hand?”

“Not one much for gambling.”

Given that they were hired on twenty dollars apiece and had used that money to purchase what few bullets they could, they had nothing but personal effects to barter with but Harry was not to be put out by this fact. He told Britt confidently that Britt could repay him when they crossed back over the border but was rather thrown when he discovered that Britt was a fair hand. It was only that Britt didn’t care to gamble, not that he was rubbish at it, and Harry had mistaken Britt’s lack of enthusiasm for the game for inexperience.

Britt won him out of three games and they were well on into their fourth when they heard a gut-wrenching sound that was unmistakably that of a man screaming in utter terror.

Abandoning the game, Britt’s hand flew to his side as he ran for Lee’s room. He had never heard his friend make such a sound as that but he knew it was still him. The fear of the fight, the delay in shooting the bandits at the ambush, the overindulgence in wine: only one man could be making that sound this night.

He cut across the street at breakneck speed and without bothering to knock or yell, Britt barged into Lee’s room to find Lee thrashing wildly on his cot trying to free his revolver from its holster. His gloves made it difficult to move his hands in his sleep which was the only reason he had not managed to get his fingers around the grip.

Rushing to the cot, Britt withdrew Lee’s revolver and tossed it away well out of reach before taking Lee’s shoulders and giving him a violent shake that was hard enough to jerk him awake. “Come on, now, wake up,” he said urgently.

Gasping, nearly foaming at the mouth, and panicked, Lee took in the sight of Britt’s face and then went for Britt’s gun in a move Britt had not anticipated and now chastised himself for. Britt shoved Lee’s arm against the wall with a loud and firm, “Drop it!”

It was not going to be that easy to combat a crazed and drunken man’s terror, for Lee fought him more desperately and Britt had to throw his body weight against Lee to gain the upper hand. Behind, he heard someone coming to help him but was afraid that the sight of someone else would drive away what little sense remained in Lee’s head and cause an accident that couldn’t be undone.

“I got it, stay back!” he shouted.

With the revolver between them and Lee’s finger dangerously close to the trigger, Britt had no choice but to bring his knee up into Lee’s crotch. Yelping as bone contacted soft flesh, Lee recoiled briefly and then bit down on Britt’s knuckle. To release his gun was to die where he stood, so Britt held on, cursing as he watched Lee spit blood out of his mouth and lock eyes with him. In the dimness of the room, Britt saw only madness in those wide green eyes, determination to kill what he thought was a man out for blood.

Britt freed one hand, grabbed a fistful of Lee’s hair on the back of his head, and slammed the wounded side into the bedpost. “Drop the goddamned gun or I’ll break both of your kneecaps, I swear to God, Lee!”

The knock to Lee’s injury seemed to jolt a sense of memory and awareness into him and Britt felt Lee’s grip on the gun slacken.

“It’s me, you idiot,” he said more softly. “Just me. Give it to me.”

Lee let go completely and Britt took both his gun and his knife and threw those into the dirt behind him as well to remove all temptations but he still stood over Lee with the intent to clout him upside the head again if Lee made a rise on him. But Lee didn’t try to stand up. Instead, he sank right down to the floor and held his head in his hands.

“Lee, what in the hell was that?” It was Harry who had also come to Lee’s aid but had wisely stayed back when Britt gave the order. Now, however, he had his hand at his side as if preparing to draw on Britt’s behalf.

“Tell them he had too much to drink, but this,” Britt motioned at his weapons on the floor where he had thrown them, “stays between the people in this room.”

“Is he gonna be okay, or should I go for someone?”

“I got him,” and it was an austere tone that he used to tell Harry without saying the words that the latter needed to leave _now_.

Harry backed out and shut the door but Britt waited until he heard the heavy footfalls fading before he felt safe saying anything aloud to the man hunched over on the ground. He sat down cross-legged opposite Lee and nudged him with one finger to prompt a response.

“Wanna tell me what that was?”

Lee’s voice came out nasally and exhausted. “Like you said, that was an alcohol-induced nightmare.”

“If that was the alcohol, you wouldn’t be speakin’ sense.”

“Then let’s say the wine made it worse.”

“You bit me.”

“I apologize for that.”

“You tried to shoot me.”

“Didn’t though, did I?”

“That could’ve been anyone and a less experienced man might’ve been killed tonight if I hadn’t gotten here first.”

“I’ll remember to barricade my door next time from the inside. You should leave now.”

“Because you’re done talkin’?”

“No, because—“

Lee moved onto his knees, cradled his belly, and heaved, spilling the contents of his stomach on the ground. A thick, putrid scent of body fluids and wine hit Britt’s nostrils and he had to exercise great self-control to not gag at the stench. Instead, he thumped Lee on the mid back to help him rid himself of more of the liquor sitting in his stomach.

“You’re a mess, you know that?”

“I know,” came Lee’s voice from the dirt. He gave a pitiful moan and then vomited again. “I’ve known it for a while.”

“D’you want my help?”

“A rag would be nice.”

Snatching a bit of cloth off the table for Lee to mop up his mouth, Britt tried again. “I meant with—whatever it is you’re having trouble with.”

Dabbing at the sliver of vomit and saliva on his chin, Lee sat back well out of the way of the mess on the ground. He ran his forearm across his brow which was heavy with cold sweat and Britt took note of how his hands trembled with every movement. It was painful to see him so beaten and broken when Britt had known him as a man not unlike himself who showed next to no emotion for any reason. He was remote at best and curt in his mannerisms at the worst of times but this full display was making Britt reconsider everything he thought he knew about his friend.

“If I knew that this could be fixed, I would have asked for help already,” Lee said in shameful submission. “What do you do when it’s something you can’t see or touch? I don’t need to be told I’m losing my mind; I already know that. So I deal, I cope, and hope that’s enough but sometimes with some assistance--” he jerked his head at the pile of sick beside him, “--the nightmares get worse. After a while, you just live with them and accept that you’ll never get a decent night’s rest until your last.”

Feeling equally useless in providing any words of comfort, Britt had to wonder how many men he had seen, had known, with these same symptoms without recognizing them for what they were. Symptoms of a man slipping, on the verge, and about to go over. What a cruel twist of fate that he finally understood what it meant in the man he knew as a friend.

“More than anything, I just don’t want to feel any of it anymore,” Lee continued, slipping back into that blank and uninterested tone that Britt knew so well. “I tried one night, couple months before we came here. Had the barrel in my mouth, had my finger on the trigger, and I couldn’t do it. My body told itself it wanted to live but now that I’ve made it this far and stooped this low, I have to wonder, for what?”

Britt had to quickly overcome his shock that Lee had been driven to attempt suicide and provide an answer to the rhetorical question, but it was a difficult thing. All his life, Britt had been told by others that to take one’s own life was to choose the coward’s way out because it meant a man was too full of fear to be of any use to himself any longer but none of those men knew someone like Lee. If Lee’s actions had driven him to the brink and he could no longer see a way out for himself, whatever he was running from whether in body or mind was something no one could protect him from. And what a terrifying thought that was: to feel and be so completely alone that your own mind turned on you.

Lee wanted to know why he had given himself a second chance. For what now did he live? For whom?

“You do it only for yourself,” said Britt. “You live or die for you, not for somebody else. Don’t stick around for anybody but yourself. It’s not your place to worry about what happens to the rest’ve the world when you’re gone.”

“What do you suppose _would_ happen? What would you do, theoretically speaking?”

Lee did not expect an emotional answer and Britt was not obliged to give him one. He had not given it much thought, what he would do if one of them were cut down. He had buried many men, women, and children, but never any he cared for, save for his parents. The thought had never occurred to him how he might go about sealing the coffin of a friend because he had so few of them. What would he do, then, if Lee was killed right in front of him? Would he mourn? Would he find it difficult to say his farewells?

He gave Lee the answer he knew his friend wanted to hear. “Bury you. Finish the job, move on.”

“Always the sentimental being.”

“The world doesn’t stand still when we leave. Anybody who wants it to, wants to stay with the dead…they never come back. I don’t plan on dyin’ just because you did first and I’d expect you to move on if it so happens that it’s me in the dirt. But neither’ve us is dead yet, so we keep goin’, day by day.”

“I might have gone as far as I could today. Far enough to let them see that I could at least do what they hired me for. But none of them know that I’ve reached the end because of my pride. Pride won’t let me show it to anyone who might judge me.”

“They don’t know you. I do and I’m not judgin’. You’re not gutless, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“I am and I don’t want you telling me I’m not solely for the purpose of trying to make me feel better about myself because I don’t appreciate being lied to when I’m looking right at the truth,” said Lee heatedly.

“I’m tellin’ you that you aren’t because you aren’t. If you were done, you’d give up completely. Cowards don’t fight back; they beg for mercy and hope what’s comin’ doesn’t happen to them. You _bit_ me, tried to pull a gun on me because you weren’t going down without a fight. You thought you were lookin’ death in the face and you gave it everything you had. Both’ve us have killed men who surrendered at the end; we know what a finished man looks like. You don’t look done to me, but that’s not my call and I’ll never say it is.”

Britt went to retrieve his weapons, picked up Lee’s, and left it on the far side of the room as a precaution before heading to the door. He propped it open with his boot and looked back in. Lee had not moved, facing away from him lost in thought.

“Are you okay now?” When he received no reply, he snapped his fingers and Lee cocked his head in Britt’s direction. “You gonna be okay if I leave?”

“No.”

Britt felt his scowl deepen as he fixed Lee with a reproachful look. “You know what I meant.”

“I’ll still be alive in the morning, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

Not altogether reassured, Britt lingered on the threshold, torn between overstepping his boundaries by insisting that he remain with Lee or walking away to keep the man’s trust. He had never been pushed this far to be so indecisive and was truly at a loss, something he had little experience in.

Sensing his hesitation, Lee turned his body toward Britt and away from his cot. “I’ll still be here,” he said again.

With one last lingering look, Britt stepped out and shut the door behind him. He made his way back to the common area and was glad to see that only Harry was waiting for him. He was not keen on having to explain or elaborate to anyone who had not already witnessed Lee’s nightmare but his relief came at the price of having to ward off Harry’s incessant questioning.

Reclaiming his seat, Britt tossed his hat down on the table and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

Eager for answers, Harry posed, “How is he?”

“That’s not for me to say.”

“I tell ya, I’ve been in this business a long time and I’ve never heard a man make a noise like that when he’s sleepin’. That must’ve been some nightmare.”

“I told you it would go right through him. Sat in his gut just long enough to go to his head and it all came out just now.”

“But the _sound_ he made…”

“All men have nightmares. You’re not human if you don’t and men in our line of work have them worse than others.”

“I’ve had nightmares. I’ve seen men have nightmares to the point where they needed a good long dunk in the water trough to come to their senses but none of ‘em ever pulled a gun on nobody. I saw his face, Britt, and whatever that was in there, it wasn’t _just a nightmare_.”

“If you’ve seen a man’s past start to catch up to him, you know what that was.” Britt made sure his voice had an inflection that suggested Harry drop the conversation and though he was positive that Harry would press the subject—pushy as he was—he was grateful that the latter conceded. It was enough to drop the subtle hint that Lee was suffering from his past and not say outright that he was mentally unfit and thankfully Harry pieced two and two together on his own.

“You’ll wanna wrap that,” said Harry, nodding at the divots in Britt’s left knuckle where Lee had sunk his teeth in deep. There would be scarring, not that Britt was a stranger to scars, but he did feel some annoyance that he now had to think up a plausible lie as to why and how he had injured himself in the middle of the night.

Taking his cup of water, Britt poured it over a wad of cloth from the table that had been used to hold the toasted corn and then wrapped it securely around his hand, flexing his fingers to test that he still had the ability to use them. No sooner had he finished his quick but effective work that Chris joined them, yawning.

“Off duty?” asked Harry.

“Just now, yes. You’re in the rotation, on in four hours.”

“Back or front?”

“Front.”

“Got it.”

Britt avoided Chris’s eye, shuffling his exposed hand of cards distractedly as Chris helped himself to some water and drummed his fingers on the table. There was a knowing air about him and Britt knew him well enough to expect the hammer to fall at any moment, though he didn’t know what he would say in Lee’s defense without being at his expense when it did.

And when it did, Britt would have to question his loyalty. He knew Lee longer and better, but he had worked with Chris on multiple occasions and respected the man like no other. Chris was the unspoken leader, the one in charge of relaying information between the villagers and the gunmen and if he saw Lee’s unstable state as a threat, there was a good chance he would ask Lee to leave or have him locked up for the safety of all. The thought of sending Lee off on his own with Calvera’s men still at large did not sit well with Britt in the least but he liked the idea of having Lee physically restrained even less.

“Is he alright?” asked Chris presently and Britt rounded on Harry, glowering.

“Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t say a thing,” claimed Harry indignantly.

“And he didn’t have to. I heard him from my post which you forget is about twenty paces from his room.”

Now wondering how much of that conversation Chris had heard, Britt said nothing.

“I didn’t know it had gotten that bad.”

Properly surprised, Britt sat up in his chair. “You hired him, knowing?”

“I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. But he fought today, and that might have sent him over the edge.” Britt was not about to correct Chris on what the latter thought he knew. “So will he be alright?”

“He’ll still be here in the morning,” answered Britt.

“Then that’s all that matters. If he still can do it, he’s welcome to.”

Britt was not at all sure that Lee could still do it. He had killed two men mostly out of luck and nearly had his skull split open in the process. If an encounter like that could bring on the sort of horrible visions Lee had seen this night, Britt didn’t want to know what another full-fledged fight would do to him. But that was a problem for the morning.

He scooped up his hat, replaced it, and bade Chris and Harry goodnight. The street lanterns were all doused to allow the guards to see in the dark but Britt didn’t need their guidance to find Lee’s room again. He knew the way by repetition and once he had found the clay structure that made up the west wall, he sat down underneath the window and blocked out all nocturnal sounds as he listened for breathing inside. He heard it, slightly unsteady, but definitely unconscious. If another nightmare came about, Britt would be able to slip inside before any of the villagers heard the screams. It was too much to hope for that Lee’s state of mind would stay between Britt, Chris, and Harry if anyone else caught sight of him in his fit of fear. He was just settling in when he was joined by Harry who took a seat on the ground beside him without a word but a look of understanding.

If he didn’t at least suspect before, he definitely knew now and was choosing to do what he could to help.

Britt nodded in thanks to him, pulling his hat down low over his eyes as he let his chin drop to his chest and waited for sleep to find him.


	3. For Going On or For Giving Up

**LEE**

If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that someone had sliced off part of his scalp and then bludgeoned him over the head before feeding him poison to make his insides writhe but as it stood, he was to blame for the majority of the aches to his body. He remembered losing himself in the drink and coming to with Britt struggling to subdue him. He recalled that at one point Britt had taken the back of his head and slammed it against the wall which accounted for the welt Lee felt there but worse still was the burning in his gut from how quickly he had consumed and then rejected the wine. 

And he was furious with himself for letting his guard down, for being so stupid as to put himself in a situation where he would have been helpless if Calvera had returned in the dead of night. He had become a hindrance and a burden and it pained him even more to know that if the bandits had stormed the village, Britt would have most likely died just outside Lee’s door in an attempt to defend him because Lee had deliberately rendered himself incapacitated and weak besides. For one death he absolutely would not be responsible and that was Britt’s. No matter the circumstances, he refused to let better men die in his place or because of him.

Resolve to never be in such a position again was what made him rise from his bed and brave the painfully bright morning light. He needed to remedy his splitting headache and get something into his stomach besides sour acid and so he trudged through the street to the common area where he hoped he might have the place to himself, but no such luck.

Harry was just finishing up what looked like a breakfast of biscuits and honey.

“Mornin’, bright eyes,” he greeted when he saw Lee. “What a shiner. There’s gotta be seven different colors in that bruising there.”

Lee touched a finger to the side of his head where he thought his bandages were, but they must have come off during his scuffle with Britt because they certainly weren’t there now. He would have to re-bandage the wound himself because if Harry was to be believed, the area around the wound was an array of unnatural colors and he did not need to be drawing attention to himself with that fact.

“Hungry? I saved you a bite or two, made it myself while on duty. Here, tuck in, have some coffee.” Harry pushed a plate toward Lee along with a cup of some dark brown liquid that Lee assumed was a brew of Harry’s own composition.

Deciding that it was safer to try and eat bread before drinking a caffeinated beverage, Lee took a modest nibble of the biscuit, swallowed, and waited to see if his stomach could hold it. When he felt certain that he would be able to keep it down, he took a much more generous portion and chased it with a large gulp of the coffee—only, it wasn’t coffee. 

Choking, eyes streaming, Lee bent double as the foul taste went down the wrong tube and Harry had to beat him soundly on the back three or four times until his passages had cleared. When he emerged from his coughing fit, he regarded Harry with subtle annoyance bordering on anger.

“Coffee, you say?” he asked bitterly.

“Well, it’s got coffee in it. Bit of bean juice, dash of whisky, some pepper for a kick. Might not taste the best, but it’ll put the energy of a spurred horse in ya,” said Harry, downing his own drink with no expression whatsoever. “But if it’s not a kick you’re after, I’ll fetch you some water from the well. Grab your plate and c’mon.”

Returning to smaller nibbles until he could have a proper cleansing liquid in his system, Lee followed Harry out back to the well. Harry pulled up the bucket, tipped half of it over himself, and then shook his head to rid it of excess water, spraying Lee from two feet away.

Lee had to exercise great self-control to not reprimand him. Harry was a good man, if somewhat displaced from reality in how his actions might be perceived by others. Perhaps he invited himself in to conversations to which he did not belong, perhaps he was a mite too inquisitive, but he meant well, and Lee could not fault him for that. 

Harry poured a cup of well water for Lee and Lee drank it gratefully, swishing it around in his mouth to rid the excess taste of whatever the hell that concoction was that Harry had deemed drinkable.

“How’s your head?” asked Harry as Lee took another cup and finished off his biscuit.

“Pounding.”

“I can imagine. You put away more wine in half an hour than most men do in two days.”

“Well, it all came back up anyway.”

“I know; I smell it on you.”

Lee held out his hand for the bucket to prove Harry’s point and then proceeded to scoop small handfuls onto his vest where tiny droplets of vomit had set in from the night prior.

“To be honest, I’m surprised at how much you put into it,” said Harry somewhat admirably. “You really sunk your teeth in. I don’t even know that I’d fight like that when cornered.”

“You would,” Lee assured him, though without any conviction. He knew every one of the seven would fight until they were beaten into unconsciousness and Harry was no exception, but he was not in the mood to relive the events of last night.

When the visions had passed and he had come into alertness, he had seen someone standing over him but he could not pick out dreams from reality. His subconscious knew that was Britt in front of him and knew his friend meant no harm but the images he had seen in his nightmares had been so blindingly real that common sense evaded him and he only knew the instinct to fight back. He fought tooth and nail and was determined to find a weapon which he did, only to have it knocked out of his hand and thus heighten his feeling of desperation. Then Britt’s voice had come to him as if from the far end of a tunnel, echoing, distant, not quite clear—and the familiarity of the voice had broken through the irrational thoughts clouding his mind and he listened to it for all he was worth.

More than the humiliation of having to apologize for attacking him, Lee was most ashamed for Britt to see him at his worst. He had lied when he said that he feared the judgment of his peers; it was only Britt’s judgment he hated to know and see. He could hear the pity in his friend’s voice, even if Britt did a rather excellent job of concealing most of it. Lee wanted none of that pity and needed none of it. He was not the first gunman to suffer from horrifying nightmares and bouts of paralysis during a fight and he would not be the last. It was just cruel irony that he happened to be the one who also had a friend fighting alongside him who could see him breaking. It was a gunman’s lot in life to suffer in silence but Lee was either quite lucky or extremely unlucky to have been found out.

In the aftermath, he had put in an honest effort to listen to Britt’s consolation. He knew that Britt would not have bothered if he didn’t believe that there was something to be salvaged from Lee’s teetering break and displacement from reality and Lee could not tell his friend what it meant to have someone show such genuine concern for him, even if it was accompanied by pity.

“You reminiscin’ there, or did I just stump ya?”

Brought back to the present along with present company, Lee gave a small shudder and invented, “Just making sure everything stays down.”

“Well, lemme tell you that if you happened to be thinkin’ about what happened last night, forget it. Britt probably already has and he’s the one with teeth marks gouged into his knuckles. But then again, you two are closer than you are with me so I s’pose you get a pass in his book. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else; it ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, whatever it is.”

“I—“

“Hey, it doesn’t matter to me if you think you’re slippin’. If you can do the job, do it. If you can’t, leave. I’ve never been one to tell a man to stay when I know he’d rather leave, especially if there’s nothin’ keepin’ him here. If you did what you came here to do, no one can ask any more of you, right? But if you do go, go with this advice: steer clear of the wine for a while.”

“You’re too kind,” said Lee. If Harry could make sense of Lee’s predicament by talking himself through it, Lee wasn’t going to be the one to ruin that idea. It seemed to help move Harry through the conversation on his own without Lee having to be an active participant which suited him just fine.

“Just so you know; if you stay and pull a gun on _me_ , you’ll be missin’ a couple teeth in the morning and I won’t feel bad about it.”

“Noted.”

“Finish up that breakfast and then we’ll go meet the others.”

Lee had lost the remainder of his appetite, placed the biscuit on the railing to the back porch, and matched Harry’s stride as they headed up front to the village center where the others were already congregating. Chris had instructed the villagers to go about as much of their daily routines as possible, provided that they remain undercover and those who could not do so were given weapons to assist in guard duty.

“Anything exciting happen last night?” Harry asked O’Reilly in an undertone as Chris continued to pick and choose orders.

“All’s quiet. Dead quiet,” said O’Reilly.

Britt saw Lee take his place in the throng and discretely flicked a finger at his temple in an indication that Lee should cover his exposed wound, as it was garnering quite a lot of attention, including Chico’s who stood four or five spaces over from Lee. Trying to ignore the stares, Lee pulled his hat down low on his left side in the hopes that the brim would hide most of the wound from view.

“However long Calvera expected his men to take to return to him, I feel that he would have made a decision by now either way,” said Chris, now addressing the gunmen. “So we’ll continue to hold at all points, switch out those on duty within reasonable hours, and wait. If anyone has firm proof of a sighting, you know the signal. No unnecessary risks. Harry, to the bell tower. Britt, the west overhang. Chico, I need you covering east and southeast. O’Reilly, southwest. Lee, how’s your head?”

“Just fine,” answered Lee as his brain hammered against his temple.

“Then it’s you and me at the south wall,” Vin told Lee, tossing him a rifle. It was not Lee’s preferred weapon of choice, but that was not to say he didn’t know how to use it. His assignment, however, led him to believe that Vin was sent to both accompany and watch over him and Lee was not hard pressed to guess who might have squealed. Britt and Harry: no contest, most assuredly Harry and yet Lee could not believe that Harry would spread such a delicate subject. If anything, Chris—wily as he was—would have guessed on his own and without putting words to it, had told Vin to sit out the rotation with Lee.

“I can help on the south wall,” offered Chico eagerly.

Vin gave an indifferent shrug, looking to Lee to accept or reject Chico’ proposal. Lee did not want the kid thinking he held any hostility toward him but just now when the events of the previous night were still so fresh and he was not feeling particularly keen on sharing anything with the young man, he was inclined to say no. Not to mention, he knew the subject of his wound was sure to crop up and he was not prepared to spend the next several hours with the boy gawking at him and peppering him with questions until he reached snapping point.

“You have your orders,” Lee told the young man. “Chris wouldn’t have given them if he wanted someone else to take your post.”

Instead of sporting a pouting lip, Chico appeared somewhat heartened by the idea that Chris had specifically given him that position as he would entrust it to no one else. At any rate, it made the kid happy and helped Lee avoid feelings of guilt in having to be somewhat firm with him. It did not, however, prevent Lee from letting out a bit of a frustrated sigh as he and Vin set off for the south wall.

“Fine thing you did back there,” Vin commented.

“You could call it that. I’d call it avoidance.”

“He’s still green. We all were once, weren’t we? Weren’t you? Just as eager and blind when you were his age?” asked Vin in Chico’s defense.

“Not at all. It was never glamorous to me despite what my normal pay intake says about me. It was never a decision to pick up a gun.”

One thing that could be said for Vin was that he was to the point without dragging that point into a bigger problem than it was, for which Lee was grateful. “Just saw one too many people gunned down, huh?”

“A few too many,” said Lee. “There’s nothing to be proud of when that sort of living is forced on you and that kid doesn’t understand that.”

“Maybe, maybe not. He probably thought there’d be some honor in it, some sort of internal reward in picking up a weapon to defend his people without knowing how and now that he thinks he’s a good shot, he’s reckless. Young, reckless, and sometimes a bit hotheaded.”

“Deadly combination in this line of work.”

“It can be, if he’s not willing to learn from more experienced men and he won’t learn if he already thinks he knows it all.”

“He does.”

“Then we’d best show him different, shouldn’t we? I don’t wanna be the one to bury him.”

Lee shared that sentiment more than he cared to admit. He had helped bury his share of bold young men and he knew them all as well as he knew Chico. They admired Lee’s skill enough to try and embody him, rival him, and he had tried his best to divert them, to give them one last chance to abandon the road they chose for themselves.

Even for a young man who had come from roots similar to this village, it would be a cruel twist of fate for Chico to die here. He could perhaps use the boy’s admiration to his advantage, try to talk sense to him and caution him against brash decisions but at the end of the day, his warning could only go so far. What Chico did in battle was something Lee had no control over.

Lee and Vin whiled away the rest of their six hours of guard duty in near complete silence besides Vin occasionally asking Lee for the time and Lee consulting his pocket watch to provide an answer. They saw no movement across the plains, no glimmer of light reflecting off a gun from the surrounding mountains. It was the most difficult point of access for the bandits to attempt since it offered no protection in the daytime but it was the widest and largest station to cover which was why it required two sets of eyes.

Two villagers relieved them at the six hour mark and while Vin went to report their lack of findings to Chris, Lee went around the back of his room where he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. He could not afford to waste bullets on practice but he could repeatedly work on the speed of his draw which was what he attempted to do now with a hollowed out portion of a nearby tree as his target. He would liked to have also worked on the speed at which he cocked back the hammer to his single-action revolver but to be safe he would have needed to empty his weapon in case of an accidental discharge and he did not feel comfortable standing there with an empty weapon if he suddenly was called to arms.

Far from being out of practice, his draw was fluid, fast, and precise but it was no true test of his abilities if he was not being faced with immediate danger. Any man could draw against a tree with the speed of a bolting horse but the tree never shot back and so Lee could not be sure that he would be as successful or prepared in a real fight.

For near on half an hour he went through the repetitive motions until his movements became a reflex that he had to put forth great effort to stop. With his arm only slightly aching, he drew his revolver once more and then dug the side of the cool metal barrel against his forehead to alleviate the heat of the day that had collected on his skin.

“I can’t be sure, but I think of the two of you, you might be the faster,” said a deep, rich voice behind him and Lee holstered his weapon without turning around. This was the one person he did not want to reveal his weakness to and now he had been caught red-handed in it. The sound of approaching boots made the wait tenser as Lee saw Chris come into view on his left.

“And before you ask, Britt didn’t tell me anything.”

“I know.” That went without saying; Britt never told one man another’s business and Lee knew he could rely on Britt to keep mum on the subject. It was just rotten luck that Chris was too perceptive.

“How’s your head?”

“Same as it was when you asked me this morning,” said Lee somewhat curtly. He was in no mood to be lectured or consoled. It was bad enough that he had to have a heart-to-heart with Britt but having to admit his ineptitude to Chris would be the final insult to his pride.

“I didn’t mean from the gunshot or the wine,” said Chris vaguely.

“I have it,” answered Lee in an equally indistinct response.

“Do you plan on sticking around?”

Wondering why everyone was assuming that just because he was plagued by mental trauma he suddenly adapted the ability to become an overnight coward, Lee prepared to walk away since he had no words to answer that question.

“I only need to know for the next rotation assignment, no other reason.”

“If I haven’t left by now, I’m not going to. Does that answer your question?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Not with words you didn’t.”

“Alright,” relented Chris. “If you want me to be direct about this, I will. If you’ve decided to stay then your only enemy is yourself and your self-doubt. It’s up to you how you want to deal with that but I need you to understand that if you can’t sort it out now, if you have a relapse and can’t face Calvera’s men when they come back, you have to stay under cover or move on. I can’t be responsible for your actions, or lack thereof.”

It was much the same as Britt had said: if Lee could not do what he was hired to do, he had no place here and if blood was spilled because of his inaction, that stain would never come off. 

“I want you to know that I don’t begrudge you your decision. I know the things you’ve done to make it this far and I know men who have gone to the wayside long before they reached this stage. You have enough sense to make up your own mind but from where I stand, I think it’s all in your head. You’re a gunman born and bred; the ability to fight comes naturally without your permission.”

That was very true. Lee had fired at the bandit who shot him without even realizing that he was riddling the man with the last of his bullets. His body had simply acted of its own accord because that’s what it knew—what _he_ knew. Even if he doubted himself, his body could react to protect him without him being fully aware of it which meant that Lee’s last enemy—his only enemy—was his imagination.

“We all have our reasons for coming into this line of business but some of us have worse stories to tell and worse memories to recall because of it. No one will ever frown on you for the things you’ve seen and done.”

Whether or not other men frowned on him was of no concern to Lee. If Chris knew, if Britt, Harry, and Vin knew, O’Reilly and Chico must as well or at least suspect and as fellow gunmen, they understood his plight more than others but the one man whose judgment he feared had none to pass and so Lee cared nothing for what the others thought of him. He only hid his ailment from them to avoid the conversations likely to follow on the subject and as a man better left alone, the less he had to hold conversations like that, the better.

Offering Chris no comment, Lee excused himself to replace Harry at the bell tower where he could be of some use without interaction. It was somewhat freeing to have such a vantage point and see the village laid out below him. He could observe and not be observed, ponder without letting his vision drift. The only bit of action that occurred in the next handful of hours was a false alarm from the southwest and a young girl chasing a stray chicken across the street. 

It was with a feeling of unease that Lee let Hilario relieve him. Surely something should have happened by now. Calvera had sent men in the immediate wake of his defeat in the last battle and with those men now dead, more should have been sent to replace them or a second attempt at a full takeover should have beenmade. Waiting was one of the worst games Lee had ever participated in and his patience did not stretch on with time or experience.

Interested to find out what the others thought about this lapse in action, Lee joined them at the common area where dinner had been set out for them. Over a meal of gazpacho, he found that the general consensus among the others seemed to be that Calvera was trying to wait them out much as they were also doing to him. It was only a matter of who struck first. Calvera could send scouts in twos and threes until he bled himself dry and the villagers could make numerous trips into the mountains to seek out Calvera’s camp but unless one party or the other moved on, they were at a stalemate.

When supper had concluded and all theories and suggestions had been divulged and talked through, Chris posed the most serious question and the one none of them were particularly eager to answer.

“If there’s anyone who wants out, now’s the time to say so. Once the fighting starts again, there won’t be respite like there is right now. It’ll be to the death, to the end. Our end or Calvera’s. So speak your piece.”

“Why is this even a suggestion?” questioned Chico. “We’ve suffered no losses yet while Calvera is down a quarter of his men. We have the advantage, so why’s there talk of giving up?”

“Because we didn’t anticipate that he would be this adamant about maintaining control over this village,” said Chris. “In his mind, he owns this village and doesn’t take kindly to outsiders stealing what’s rightfully his. He depends on it for his every need to the point of desperation and a desperate man can put up an awfully impressive fight when cornered. So the fight that follows will be brutal and there will be losses, of that I promise you.”

“We suspected that when we signed on,” said O’Reilly. “I don’t think any of us thought that this would be as easy as you made it out to be.”

“Maybe not, but I don’t think we were expecting to have such a stubborn enemy, either,” Vin pointed out.

Chris weighed their words for a moment before turning to Britt. “It’s only going to get more difficult from here.”

“We don’t quit just because it gets difficult. Wrong trade to be in if giving up were that easy.”

“But we don’t get to live as long as we have by being stupid,” reasoned Harry. “I’m not sayin’ that now’s the time to abandon ship and it wouldn’t sit right with me to leave these people when they need us most but I signed on to make a few notches in my belt and be done with it, not take part in a full-scale war. And I don’t plan on dyin’ for these people, or anyone for that matter.”

“Only you can be the judge of how much you think is too much,” Chris agreed. “That’s why I’m asking right now what is too much. Who wants to stay and see this through and who thinks they’ve contributed their fair share?”

“Not done yet,” said Britt stoutly.

“Not even close,” added O’Reilly.

Chico chimed in next with his promise to stay while Vin offered his with some hesitation.

Lee waited for Harry to have his say since both of them were delaying their decisions for the same reason. How far was too far? What purpose did they have for staying? Was their life worth less than those of the people around them? Harry was a fortune seeker and he would find none here, so what kept him in the ranks? It surely wasn’t the double gold eagle that had made up his salary.

“Alright, I’ll tell you this: so long as I see we have the upper hand, I’ll stay, but like I said, I’m not fixin’ to die here and nobody can call me selfish for lookin’ out for myself if I’m all I’ve got. I’m not like the rest’ve these people with families and farms. It’s me, my horse, and my gun.”

“They won’t blame you for protecting what you have,” Chris assured him. “They’re doing exactly the same thing and they know that they were lucky enough to have you come here in the first place when hundreds of others wouldn’t.”

Looking not entirely reassured that his fleeing would not be seen as an act of betrayal, Harry took a long pull on his cigar.

All eyes moved to Lee but he had already prepared his answer after contemplating what he was truly running from. He didn’t come here to die, but neither would he flee solely because he was afraid of it.

“I’m here,” he told them.

Obviously pleased at their responses, Chris gave a grateful nod, clapped Chico’s shoulder, and took his leave to give the village leaders the good news. As before, the others peeled off one by one to let the gravity of their decisions set in until only Lee and Britt were left at the table.

Britt had taken out his pocket novel again and held it close to his face with one hand while stretching each of his fingers individually on his bandaged hand to test for any long term damage and he only glanced up when Lee reached across the table for the water jug.

As Lee raised the cup to his lips, Britt made the side comment, “Wine’s under lock and key in case you decide to go hunting for it tonight.”

“It’ll be too soon the day I taste wine again.”

“Then that should help you sleep better.”

“That’s always my intention but never my accomplishment.”

“Try anyway.”

“You’ll hear me if I can’t.”

“If I do, I’m gonna muzzle you this time. Don’t you bite me again.”

“Then throw a bucket of water on me first.”

Britt let him have the last word with a ghost of a grin on his hardened face and a turned page of his book. He was not a man of many words to those who needed but a few to listen to but he had plenty to say if he thought it might do the listener some good. Lee found himself in one category or the other at various times and this was an occasion for quick, witty banter, not anecdotes and words of wisdom. It was one of the reasons Lee believed the two of them got on so well; they could shorten or lengthen their conversation as needed depending on circumstances.

What was said between them also covered what was left unsaid in that Lee knew where Britt had bedded down the night before and was telling his friend that no such sacrifice needed to be given tonight. His interactions throughout the day and his profitable practice had reset some of his confidence. He had reassurance now and felt the looming shadow over his shoulder begin to let light through and so tonight he hoped to sleep better, untroubled.

Already he was beginning to feel sleep come to him as it not had in ages when he heard rustling from just outside his rear windows. Woven straw made up the blinds but it was dark enough out that Lee could not see through the small holes in the fabrication. No one was due to be stationed near his room for this rotation but earlier he had seen those three boys who were taken with O’Reilly fancying themselves proper guards and he was willing to bet that they were now positioned just on the other side of his window. With half a mind to tell the boys off for being so irresponsible and especially after daylight hours, Lee marched back out his door and rounded the building to find—nothing.

The space was empty and far too quiet for Lee’s liking. As he listened, he heard not the crickets singing their song nor the gentle rustle of the breeze sweeping through the grass nor the sound of villagers conversing within their homes.

He put a hand to his holster, heart picking up pace in his chest as the sweat began to set in. A prickle along the back of his neck made each individual hair stand on end. His thumb rested upon the revolver hammer…


	4. At the End of the Barrel

**BRITT**

Britt had been completely engrossed in his pocket novel when he heard rocky debris trickling down the mountainside just outside the double doors that led into the back area by the well. Local game extended only to birds and squirrels unless one of the chickens had gotten loose again and so Britt had to wonder what might have caused the sudden miniature dirt avalanche. He leafed down his current page and walked out onto the back terrace. He listened for a sound that would clue him in as to why there was no more debris falling into the yard. 

It could not have been rocks shifting on their own from above or Britt would have heard it long before now as the valley lent itself well to echoes. No, something had caused the earth to give way and it was no small critter.

With the lantern light from inside at his back, he peered into the darkness, squinting to adjust his eyes and pick out unnatural shapes along the mountainside. A wall of trees and bushes was all he could see and he heard—nothing.

Too long had he been in this business to not know what absolute silence meant. Nature knew when predators were stalking prey and grew silent to give the prey a sporting chance. Right now, every instinct was telling him to fire or duck behind the well but as prey, he had already exposed himself.

He knew they were there before he saw them and he knew he was outnumbered. They must have had orders to keep Britt and the others alive if possible, otherwise they would have shot him by now. He raised his hands and saw black masses in the darkness press forward and solidify into shapes of men with weapons drawn on him.

Inwardly, he cursed himself for his negligence, for not posting a guard or just biting back his fatigue and taking up the post himself but outwardly he accepted what was happening with no emotion and no words. What was that Chico had said about having the advantage, of being ahead? That reassuring notion had contributed to this foul up and each and every one of them were equal parts to blame.

The bandits gave him an order in Spanish that he did his best to interpret and started walking. Around the building, across the street, under the canopy that draped over the cantina. Britt was the first to arrive with his bandit accompaniment. The fact that he had not heard shots gave him hope that the others had also surrendered just as peacefully but he could not yet release the breath he was holding for them until he saw them in the flesh for himself.

He did not have to hold that breath for long as he watched as the other six were led toward him in defeat and also various stages of submission.

It appeared that only Harry had put up a fight as he was all but dragged in, bleeding from both nostrils and a cut on his lip. He yanked himself free of his captors’ hold and wiped his sleeve across the lower half of his face. Chris and Vin had submitted willingly and wisely and now had their hands atop their head. O’Reilly required only the slightest nudge to move him under the canopy and Chico had to be pushed about rather roughly as he still seemed like he had every intention of fighting back. Lee was escorted in by two men who both had a hold on the back of his jacket and were pulling him along like a drunken father manhandling his child. They finally released him by shoving him against one of the stone columns and Lee brushed the wrinkles out of his vest to occupy his hands even though Britt could see his eyes searching about for an escape route.

He waited for Lee’s gaze to find him and when it did, he shook his head in an almost indistinguishable act. Lee would not appreciate being told this vocally, but in shooting down Lee’s bid for freedom, Britt was conveying just one word to him: _steady_.

Calvera came out from behind the inside counter where several of the villagers had been herded together to answer for their retaliation. The bandit looked extremely pleased with himself as he cast a collective glance around at them.

“One of us was bound to let our guard down, eh? You should have been more vigilant knowing that I know the location of this village but you don’t know where I have been camped with my men. It was only a matter of waiting until your overconfidence made you slip up. A full day and a half of no sign from us and some of you were starting to think I had gone, especially after you killed the men I left to keep you pinned down.”

“An oversight none of us will make again,” said Chris, sounding bored but looking murderous.

“Not here you won’t. You’re too used to dealing with northern opponents who fight like you and think like you but south of the border, we do things a little differently.”

Indeed, they did, and Britt would admonish himself for the rest of his days for not taking that fact into account.

“So what happens now?” asked Chris. As innocent as the question sounded, it was delivered with bated breath as they waited for the hammer to fall. Would they be lined up to face the firing squad, made sport of, or released to tuck tail and run?

“Now? Now we talk.” Walking amongst them, reading their faces, Calvera continued, “Some of you came only because you were paid to do so. Others because it was _the right thing to do_.” Here he scoffed at Chris, as this was evidently what he concluded was Chris’s reasoning. “Maybe one or two came for the adventure, the challenge of it.” He stopped in front of Lee who to his credit, did not look away. “And some of you are this close to cracking.” He held up his forefinger and thumb less than half an inch apart. “You’re dressed like your clothes cost more than this entire village harvests in a season. Why did you come? The pay for this job wouldn’t have covered one finger of the gloves you’re wearing. They couldn’t have afforded to pay you more than what you earn north of the border.”

Lee said nothing, but this only seemed to amuse the bandit.

“Looks like one of my men nicked you there.” Calvera poked at the wound alongside Lee’s head with the tip of his small finger and Lee winced ever so slightly. Whether by his own doing or the manhandling from the bandits, Lee’s wound had reopened and was dripping a very slow, fine bit of blood down the back of his ear.

“A lucky man, you are,” Calvera observed. He was pressing Lee now, tightening the noose and closing the window of opportunity for Lee to comply.

“You don’t strike me as the hot-headed type, the kind that keeps his mouth shut out of stubbornness. You have manners and you know that it’s rude to not speak when spoken to.”

Still, Lee remained silent, though Britt took note of how his gloves were twitching: eager to either strike a blow or draw. Or maybe they were shaking out of fear of what could and very well might happen in the next few moments.

“This is a simple situation, my friend. I give an order and you obey it. One wrong move and you will find yourself filled with nearly thirty bullets. I don’t ask much of you, only that you answer me when I ask you a question. So, I will give you one last chance to do as I say, and I will count to five. One…”

Calvera drew his revolver and set the tip of the barrel against Lee’s forehead. Any expression Lee had before now slid right off his face. His eyes looked without seeing, taking him and displacing him from this moment. It was the same defense mechanism Britt had seen on his face that had been there during the last shootout. Lee had simply shut down, for the alternative was to either lose his head completely or try to defend himself and both would result in a bullet to his head five seconds too early.

Britt found himself moving forward. He didn’t yet know if he could or would make his move to intervene by violent action but he did know that he could plant himself between Lee and Calvera’s gun. If he couldn’t get there in time however, he could knock the gun out of Calvera’s hand even if he caught several bullets in the process. Calvera knew what ailed Lee and he was a man who found entertainment in mocking the victim for it, which was an act of sadism that Britt would not stand for. His friend was unresponsive, unaware, and alone, but Calvera would shoot him anyway just to prove a point.

Britt had taken but half a step when he felt O’Reilly’s hand on his arm.

“Two…”

“Let him alone,” said Harry abruptly. “He’s got nothin’ to say to you.”

“Doesn’t he? Not even if his life depended on it?”

“His life doesn’t depend on it,” said Britt at last. “You won’t shoot him.”

“And why is that?” Calvera challenged, and it sickened Britt to see him enjoying himself.

“Because you’re in the line of fire. You kill one’ve us, the rest’ve us will all get off one shot before you gun us down and every one’ve those shots will be aimed at you.” That was a promise Britt was certainly willing to adhere to, but he was fibbing when he spoke for everyone. He would have done the same for any of the six men here, but wasn’t entirely sure that they would reciprocate on Lee’s behalf.

“Do the others share that sentiment, I wonder?”

“Try us,” said O’Reilly.

“Then perhaps we should try this again, start over with the gunbelts on the table right here and then I will ask your friend to speak. Any man who would like to challenge me then is welcome.”

“Awfully brave of you to challenge unarmed men, knowing full well what the outcome would be,” said Harry with disgust.

“I call it being tactical.”

“Then give the order, see how that tactical decision pays off,” Harry suggested.

“Or I could have my men shoot you now before we can come to an agreement if you’d rather not wait.”

“You won’t catch us trembling before a man who can only fight with thirty guns at his back,” said Lee and while Britt breathed an inward sigh of relief that his friend had given in only to appease the bandit and prevent bloodshed, he was none too pleased with the words Lee chose to say. “Cowardice and idiocy don’t mix well in this profession."

“He speaks! Praise God, he’s a man of words after all,” cried Calvera. “Now, was that really so difficult?” When Lee had no reply to this equally smug exclamation, Calvera gave a dramatic sigh. “Come now, let’s not start this all over again.”

“If you’re going to kill me, you’re not going to toy with me first,” said Lee stoutly.

“I don’t want to kill you. All I asked for was the answer to the question of why you came to this village.”

“An answer you don’t deserve and won’t receive.”

“I am being generous. I am considering offering you your lives but the small price I require is an answer to a question.”

“It shouldn’t matter to you what our reasons are for being here,” said Chris.

“You’re right; it doesn’t matter. I’m just full of natural curiosity. Men like you who could have so much more than what this village has to offer intrigue me.”

“It’s as you already said: the challenge, the pay, the right thing to do. No more or less than that. We came to kill if need be, but we always hope to avoid it which is why we gave you the option to leave.”

“I am giving you the same courtesy: ride on. Surrender your weapons and you have my word that they will be returned to you when my men escort you north. Go back to your people and your problems north of the border and leave my people to me. These,” he gestured at the handful of villagers being held at gunpoint, “are not your people and no concern of yours. So go in peace and forget what happened here.”

“We’ll go,” agreed Chris, “but not a one of us will forget.”

Calvera’s false grin flickered. “I’ll take those gunbelts now.”

Knowing that the rest of them were looking to him for direction, Chris made quick work of removing his gunbelt. Calvera, however, was not yet done with the rest of them. He approached Harry who it seemed was fighting every natural instinct to not break the bandit’s nose. Moving into Harry’s personal space with less than a foot between them, it was a deliberate dare and one that Britt doubted Harry could resist.

“Your belt, then, gunman,” said Calvera mockingly.

Harry’s large, capable hands had balled into fists at his side. For a man as carefree and genial as he, it was actually quite unsettling if not downright frightening to see him with this much hate on his face. The anger to be seen there was palpable and it was exactly what Calvera wanted. Harry could be bull-headed when it came to backing down or choosing to fight and now was absolutely not the time to put that coin-toss to the test.

Britt was not prepared to watch Harry make a deadly mistake that would inevitably be his last simply because he could not stand to be ridiculed by a man half his size but where he was ready to take physical action on account of Lee, he knew only a stern word was required here. “Harry…” he said quietly, but firmly.

“Trust me when I say I don’t need the guns to kill you,” seethed Harry with teeth bared as he looked down on Calvera.

“Harry,” warned Chris.

Yanking his belt open with nearly enough force to snap it in two, Harry stomped over to the table where Chris’s belt already was and added it to the pile. He then went to stand beside Chris, barrel-chest heaving.

Britt was next but if Calvera was hoping to have better luck with him in terms of a reaction, he would be sorely disappointed. The simple fact of the matter was that Britt just did not rise to the bait. Anyone who knew him would confirm it; he could only be goaded if he was held at gunpoint and right now his life depended on him not allowing his anger to cloud his judgment.

Invading Britt’s space as he had done with Harry, Calvera nodded at Britt’s holster. “I know you could do it before my men even had a chance to blink. Try it; this is the only opportunity you’ll ever get.”

Britt could smell onion and tomato on the bandit’s breath with how close he was. He stared into those soulless brown eyes but he had an uncanny ability to hold a stare longer than most men and waited for his opponent to blink in the only position of dominance he could gain just now.

Calvera looked away momentarily but then shook his head. “Nothing to say. I threaten your friend over there and you speak up but now you have nothing to say?”

“You’re in my way if you want my gun,” said Britt crisply.

Calvera stepped back and Britt unbuckled his belt, released the cord around his leg, and folded it over in his hands. He extended his arm sideways without taking his eyes from Calvera and dropped the belt onto the table.

There was never an opportunity for Calvera to test Vin, O’Reilly, and Chico because at O’Reilly’s insistence, all three had added their belts to the pile in quick but still defiant compliance, leaving only Lee whose belt was in hand. He moved toward the table but Calvera blocked his path.

“Are you curious, gunman? Curious about who would be the quicker to the draw? Let’s find out.”

Lee’s nostrils flared but he remained composed. “I’m afraid you’d lose,” he said, and reached around Calvera to toss his weapon onto the table.

Showing the tiniest bit of disappointment, Calvera had one of his men collect the belts. “You have ten minutes to grab your belongings and anything else you want. This is your free pass, my courtesy to you. This village belongs to me and I am gifting you whatever you want as long as you can carry it. Ten minutes.”

Britt did not go quickly. He had almost nothing to pack and what he did have he could gather in less than a minute so after collecting a saddlebag from his horse, he took his time returning to the common area to grab his book where he had left it. His room was in the building that sat alongside the church and all of his belongings were on a trunk at the foot of his cot: his coat, a spare shirt, a small rotting piece of timber wood from a house burnt long ago, a few other items of lesser importance. 

He threw the saddlebag over one shoulder, his coat over the other, and then crossed the street with many enemy eyes on him to Lee’s room where as he suspected, he found Lee stuffing his meager belongings into his own saddlebags with a vacant expression.

Britt shut the door behind him with more force than he intended.

“What was that back there?” he demanded but Lee continued to pack without interest, never even looking up at him and so Britt stomped forward and thrust out his arm in front of Lee to prevent him from continuing his work. It was not a violent act, as Britt never lost his temper and hardly had one to begin with, but he did want Lee to grasp the fact that Britt had never been so completely and utterly serious as in this moment. “I’ll ask you again: what was that? Were you hopin' he would shoot you?”

“I had no hopes in that moment.”

“I don’t stand for men mocking other men for their problems but he would’ve just left you be if you’d have spoken up when he told you to. You didn’t, and it almost got the rest’ve us killed.”

“Your overly protective nature was what would have gotten you all killed,” snapped Lee. “All that hogwash about how it wouldn’t have any profound effect on you if he killed me. I don’t think you spoke for everyone when you said the rest of them would take a shot at him if he put a bullet in my skull, only yourself. If he had shot me, that would have been the end of it and you promised to bury me and move on so where do you figure in pulling a gun on him and having the rest of them do the same is a part of _moving on_?”

“He called your weakness and the rest of us were defending you.”

“Yes, he called my weakness to try and get a rise out of me and you’ll notice I kept my composure even with a gun to my head. In my youth I was far too used to being mocked and played with to let it bear any weight on me now. Every man outside of this room knows it: I’m the gunman who came into this job on the verge of lunacy and that’s all there is to it.”

“If you were so unbothered by it, you wouldn’t have been ready to draw on 'im,” argued Britt.

“We all wanted to draw on him because of the despicable human filth he is. I just had the misfortune to be the one he singled out. I finally said something not because I was ready to fight but because I didn’t want your blood on my hands. I didn’t believe you when you first told me you’d finish the job and move on and I didn’t believe it back in the cantina. You’d have shot him for threatening me and you’d have died and I’m going to tell you right here and now— _not for me_. You don’t owe me that.”

Lee’s anger abated and dissolved into uncertainty and resentment. He resumed packing his things as Britt finally withdrew his arm once again at a loss at how to console his friend. Here he was believing that Lee had had some sort of half-mad death wish when he could not have gotten things more wrong. Britt had come in here with the full intention of scolding Lee for putting others in harm’s way but Lee had turned the conversation back around and reprimanded Britt for even considering putting his life on the line for Lee.

“And don’t look so confused,” said Lee as he tied off the buckle to his saddlebag. “You expressed your disgust for someone who allows others to die because of his indecision so I was only preventing that from happening. I don’t take your threats lightly.”

Britt truly didn’t know what he would have done to Lee or any man who was the direct cause of someone else being killed. He had told Lee to deal with his demons or lit out but he knew Lee was not one to run and so he knew his friend would try his level best to contribute. Lee had made it his new priority to own up to his near failure but tonight that failure had come so close to becoming a reality and Britt had unwittingly been a part of it.

“It’s a funny thing how your mind tells you what it is you fear but you never really know until you experience it. Tonight I found out that it’s not my death; it’s anyone else’s for me. I’ve killed more men than I can count but I don’t ever want to bury a man who takes a bullet for me and leaves me to live with that. If you die, I’ll bury you and move on but if you die for me, you don’t give me a choice in the matter. I’ll spend the rest of my life in shame for letting it come to that so I’m not asking you—I’m telling you—don’t.”

 _Well, I’ll be damned_. Something had to be said for Lee facing his fears tonight and confronting his own mortality only to realize that it would leave a much bigger scar to have to watch another man take a bullet for him. In death, one could only die but if left alive from another’s sacrifice, that was a far more difficult tonic to swallow.

And Britt had not once stopped to consider what sort of impact his actions would have on Lee if he had stepped forward and not allowed O’Reilly to restrain him. If Britt had knocked Calvera aside or moved in front of Lee, if he had been shot down as he fully intended to be, it would leave Lee far worse off than he had been at any point since coming to this village. Yes, Lee was slipping and had been for some time but it wasn’t fear of the fight or of the bullet with his name on it that would send him over the edge.

Still, for as long as they had known each other, Lee had never asked anything of him and Britt had never interjected advice where he knew it wasn’t wanted but now Lee was directly giving Britt an order that he had no business giving and a boundary had been breached.

“If I were to die for any man I would have a reason for doin' it and you can’t tell me that you know that reason.”

“You’re too good of a friend. I might be worth another man’s life, just not yours.”

“I never tell you your business so don’t you tell me mine. Only I get to decide what my life is worth. I would've stepped in tonight to protect my friend and for no other reason. I knew the risk and I took it anyway.”

“I know; that’s the only reason I spoke up.”

Lee gave him a reluctant and half-hearted quarter-smile before folding his saddlebag over his arm and walking out. Britt waited only a moment before following him.


	5. One Last Decision

**BRITT**

As a parting gift, Calvera’s men had jeered at the seven during their mount up and as influent as he was in the Spanish language, Britt could still pick out several choice swearwords being hurtled at him from the onlookers. Not a one phased him, as he could only focus on that leering, smug-faced man; the one who basked in his victory and found amusement in seeing Britt and the others sitting weaponless atop their horses. Hate was a strong word and one Britt did not throw about lightly. It required a great amount of energy to linger on hate for so long, which was how he had learned to release the anger before it manifested into something he couldn’t control or afford to preserve. More often than not he had seen men like him who were just as gifted if not more so but their driving force was the absolute loathing they harvested for another individual and nine times out of ten, that loathing cut their lives short while the one out of ten went on to live a bitter existence. 

Hate was a luxury to the rich man and a crippling blow to the poor one and as a man born poor, raised poor, and existing poor in the profession he held, he had no room to carry the weight of hate when he had to fit everything in a saddlebag. He didn’t hate the men who had stolen his childhood and family from him, he didn’t hate the men whom he had filled with bullets and buried whether he knew them well or not, but this man—this horrible, despicable individual who was smirking at him now who preyed on the weak and relished other men’s pain—Britt could not stand to look at this man one more second.

It might have been the proper thing to do in waiting for Chris to have his last say or take the lead but Chris and Britt had a mutual agreement that they had a partnership and Britt would not take orders so he was at liberty to leave at his leisure. He dug his heels slightly into his horse’s sides and it set off at a gallop toward the north road. The sound of hooves followed in his wake and he knew the others were close behind him and not far behind them would be the five or six men assigned to see them on their way to the border.

Three hours later they were still riding north and for that long, thought-provoking ride, he wanted nothing more than to demand that his weapons be returned to him but he knew that he was not in a position to demand anything. As they came onto level ground in a clearing, he pulled his horse up short and the others fell into line beside him as they waited for their escort to hand over the sack of collected weapons.

They were given the order to stay atop their horses until the bandits were well out of reach by rifle and then their weapons were dropped unceremoniously in front of Chris’s horse. If Britt had felt inclined to, he could have snatched up O’Reilly’s rifle and shot at least one of the fleeing bandits off of his horse but it would achieve absolutely nothing except a miserably small morsel of personal satisfaction so he stayed atop his horse for a few seconds more. 

He was the first to dismount and gather up his weapons, reclaiming his belt among the seven and buckling it back on with haste until it was in its proper place. Only then did he relax the tension in his neck and shoulders and allow himself to feel at ease within. It was a gunman’s worst nightmare to be robbed of his weapons and left defenseless and though Britt had kept his knife in his back pocket, it would have done him no good at any point this night to draw it and he knew it so to feel so helpless, it was excruciating for him as a man who took his profession so seriously.

One by one the others dismounted to gather their weapons and sift through the bullets within them in complete silence.

That feeling of defeat lingered heavy on the air as thick as fog. They had been so close to victory and well on their way to it but it was one small mistake that dashed all of their progress and hard work. What had they done wrong? Was it not spacing out their guards properly? Allowing their success to cloud their better judgment? Overestimating Calvera’s persistence and stealth? A culmination of all of it?

And how could it be that Calvera’s men had managed to take the village all at once, secure the gunmen simultaneously without a sound and with no warning? Surely _someone_ must have seen them coming in. How was it possible for twelve differently stationed guards to miss thirty men, even if it was in the middle of the night? The only explanation Britt could pinpoint was that someone had _let_ Calvera in, but why? If they were on track to victory, why would any of the villagers betray them? No, he had to believe that it was just a very unlucky combination of circumstances that had led to this and no fault of the men who had hired them. The odds should have been in their favor but it seemed that fate had gifted Calvera the odds this time.

Experienced men such as them had all taken one major loss to set them on this path but they did not continue on this road by continuously losing so to suffer such a defeat now, where did that leave them? Could they return to their lives knowing that they had left a job unfinished? Was it better to cut their losses now?

Maybe for some of them but Britt could not live with the fact that his enemy had gifted his life back to him in exchange for his commitment to his duty. The man had looked him in the eye, dared him to shoot, and then handed him life as if Britt was a beggar when he chose to bank on the safe option of turning the other cheek. No man had the right to dangle Britt’s future tantalizingly over his head and tell him to jump for it, least of all a man who knew Britt could have bested him if he dared.

He would go back, not for the villagers, helpless as they were, and not—as Calvera had assumed—it was the _right thing to do_. If there was one thing Britt never brought into question it was his morality. He had made plenty of decisions in his life and not all of them were ones made by men who normally took the high ground. He did what was necessary; no more or less. And this—going back to mark this job complete—was necessary.

But he gave pause…

Why was this necessary? Was he returning for a self-serving purpose or for the benefit of the most people involved? When possible, Britt tried to resort to the option that would prove to be most fruitful for all parties but he had nothing to gain and what little he had to lose by going back. Was it hate that was pulling on him now? Was it rage in facing an enemy, being unable to kill him, and having to flee like a coward that made him all too willing to return? Or was it pride? He would liked to have said that he was a humble man but he knew his talent, knew his temperament, and knew that he did not like leaving a man alive who should have been one of his kills.

For whom was he returning, and for what? Was he about to cut his own life short by giving in at last? He grimaced in the thought that not one man besides him was having exactly the same internal conflict and he could therefore not ask for advice.

There was one, however, who knew of that conflict even if he did not share it, and he was regarding Britt now with sympathy. Lee would be waging his own war inside his head but he had more reason than most to side with Britt. What mattered was that Lee understood, even if he did not agree, and that was the foundation of their friendship. They did not have to agree to comprehend.

The rest of them stood there, eyes still and distant as they weighed their options: torn between moving on and going back. Or at least, most of them were. He would not be the one to make the decision for them but he could give them the incentive to choose way or another by being the first to defer to the less favorable option.

He walked the few paces back to where his horse stood and climbed into the saddle.

“What’re you doin’?” asked Harry.

“Exactly what you think I’m doin’,” said Britt.

“You’re not serious. You can’t actually be thinkin’ about goin’ back there?”

“Not thinking. Am.”

“For what? What purpose does it serve? How does it help you, or anyone?”

Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it couldn’t help anyone, but Britt was not one to leave a job unfinished when the job was all he had. He was a gunman through and through, born for this life, and if he couldn’t see the job to its completion, what good was he? It was not a disregard for his life but rather an absolute sense of honor. This was how he could make his peace with himself. This would set his mind at ease, otherwise it would always be his greatest indecision. He needed this, he had the confidence to do it, and the hope that it was not for the wrong reason that he would go back.

“You’ll need some help, then,” said O’Reilly and Britt nodded appreciatively as the latter joined him on his own horse.

After O’Reilly, it became nearly unanimous that north was not the direction they would be heading. Chico had that glowing look of admiration for Britt as he joined them but Britt had a sense of dread about the boy’s inclusion. He was a fair fighter, driven and passionate, but not disciplined, and not experienced. As Britt looked upon him, he saw only another dug grave, another young man buried beneath the dirt before his time, but it was not Britt’s place to deny the boy. After all, Chico had come of his own accord and Chris had predicted that the fight would turn even deadlier whether they had the advantage or not.

Chris, it seemed, had already made up his mind to return and was just waiting to see which of them would volunteer themselves first. Britt expected no less of him and if any of them had stepped up to go back, he was positive that at least Chris would be one of them. It took no persuasion on Vin’s part to join them but he did make his intentions know most likely to reassure himself.

“Those farmers gave everything they had to get us; seems only fair we give everything we’ve got to help them now. And each and every one’ve ‘em’s worth more than twenty dollars.”

As the list of defectors dwindled, Harry was becoming more and more desperate in trying to make them see what he considered to be reason. His loud, confident voice pitched forward as if he were giving a speech in the running for territory governor while Lee quietly stood beside him examining his revolver.

“Look, you asked me just hours ago if I would stay or go and I said I’d stay as long as we had the advantage. We absolutely don’t right now. It’s plain suicide, what you’re doin’ and that is a fact and as much as I look out for myself, I’ll admit I’ve grown fond of you all so I’m beggin’ you to getcher heads on straight. Even if we freed the villagers and even if they fought back with us, we’d be the ones comin’ in blind. It was hard enough to have the seven of us and some eight or nine farmers with guns drivin’ out forty men but when thirty men try to keep out seven men, I hate to say it, but in no scenario do the seven win. Those are odds I’m not willin’ to take.”

“So don’t,” said Britt simply.

“As I told you before, Harry, no one will judge you either way,” said Chris, though his deep, stern tone suggested that he was doing that very thing. “You’ve given more than most men would to a village that poor. If this is as far as you’re willing to go, then good luck to you.”

Seeing that he was about to lose the argument, Harry appealed one last time to Britt. “You’re worth more than that. You deserve more than dyin’ there.”

Britt offered him a shrug of one shoulder as if to leave that statement up to debate but found that he was somewhat touched by the concern this man showed to him just now. This man who had been a stranger a month and a half ago was now pleading with him to not ride toward certain death. Those were odds Harry himself probably would not have bet on.

“Doesn’t one man in the six’ve you have a sane head on his shoulders? Lee?”

“ ‘Sane’ isn’t the word I would use,” muttered Lee as he went to his horse and settled into his saddle.

It was a strange moment that followed in which Britt waited for Lee to say something to him in parting. He didn’t expect that this would be their last conversation, otherwise he might have had something more profound to say but the realization that he would go one way and Lee would go the other was starting to register with him. What could he say to his oldest friend, knowing that there was likely death at the end of his road? Or more to the point, what would Lee allow him to say since sorrowful partings were not something either of them were accustomed to?

As it turned out: nothing. Lee said nothing and Britt answered with the same.

Harry, on the other hand, gave a dissatisfied shake of his head. “Godspeed to you all, then.” He urged his horse into a trot and had made it all of thirty feet when he pulled back on the reins and looked over his shoulder after realizing Lee was not with him. “You comin’?”

Lee spurred his horse forward to come and stand beside Britt’s and it was with both a rising and sinking feeling that Britt nodded to his friend. This prompted Harry to almost turn completely around in his saddle as his eyes settled incredulously on Lee.

“I don’t believe this. I don’t believe for one second that you wanna go back.”

“I don’t; that’s why I have to,” said Lee in his matter-o-fact tone.

“ _You_ , of all people?”

“I have my reasons.”

“I know your reasons and they’re about to get you killed. I’m tryin’ to save you, here, Lee.”

But to Lee it wasn’t about his life. Britt knew in part his friend was going back to prove his worth to himself but the other part, the greater part, was to answer the very question Britt was asking himself in what it meant and what it would accomplish to walk into death’s arms. 

“Have a drink for me, wherever you’re going,” Lee called to Harry.

Harry rocked in his saddle, chewing on the inside of his cheek and muttering incoherent words as he glanced between his six companions and the road ahead. The internal conflict was quite a thing to behold as his horse paced in place, two steps forward, half a step back with its master's indecision. Harry contemplated his next move until finally he spurred his horse forward and then turned it wildly back around, riding straight up in front of Britt and Lee.

“I swear to high heaven, if I die for this, I’m gonna ask the Almighty to send me back just to kill you two,” he said vehemently, pointing at them with more irritation than anger.

Knowing Harry as he did, Britt privately thought that the Almighty just might grant him that request.

“There’s a watering hole about a mile back. We’ll water the horses and then we don’t stop until we reach the village,” said Chris. “We have to be in position before sunrise.”

At the watering hole, they all dismounted once again and took final stock of their weapons in case they had to ride in at full gallop, though more than likely a surprise attack would be the order of the day to catch the unsuspecting bandits while they were still sleeping or at least half-asleep.

Lee was attempting to get his horse to drink but the stallion was reluctant to do so, nudging at Lee incessantly as if it could sense its owner’s unease. Stroking its muzzle to reassure it, Lee spoke words Britt couldn’t hear before finally managing to get the attuned animal to drink its fill. As he ran his fingers through his horse’s mane, Lee gave no indication that he heard Britt approach.

“Good?” asked Britt and Lee gave a distracted jerk of his head. “Not good enough, huh?”

“It’ll have to do.”

Britt looked pointedly at the solid black stallion. “What’s his name?”

“Major.”

That name did not surprise Britt in the least, as Lee was not the kind of man to give an affectionate name to an animal even if he did favor the beast. Britt wondered why he had asked, wondered if it mattered, and concluded that it did, to some extent. It revealed a small, vulnerable part of Lee that Britt had not known, which was to showcase the relationship he had with his horse.

The others were far enough away that Britt felt safe continuing on to the real conversation he had wanted to have since this could very well be their last.

“Everyone expected both of you to go,” he said with no preamble.

“Including you?” asked Lee.

“Includin’ me.”

“But you hoped I would stay.”

“I only hoped you would do what was best for you. If this helps you face your get your closure, then it doesn’t matter what I think.”

“It matters to me.”

“Lee, I’ve known you for a long time and I can’t believe that anything anyone says matters to you.”

That was partly true. Lee had had words with nearly all five of the other men who were now riding back with him and their input on his condition whether they knew about it before or after Calvera outed him was of little consequence to Lee. But Britt’s viewpoint mattered simply because of their mutual respect for one another. 

Wrestling with an answer that would both prompt Britt to reveal his reasoning and sound off-handed, Lee finally answered, “You can’t get through this life without occasionally taking into account what others say. For some people, in some circumstances, it does matter.”

“Tell you what: if we’re still breathin’ when the dust clears, I’ll tell you,” Britt proposed.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“I know it.”

That should have been the end of it right there. Britt should have concluded the conversation and walked away but he had come to know Lee as he did by observing what was not said rather than what was and right now Lee was still half-wishing he had ridden on. Still filled with doubt, still fearful of what would be waiting for them.

Dropping his voice so that he could be sure that only Lee would hear him, Britt added, “I don’t have many friends in this world and I prefer it that way but you’re unlucky enough to be one of ‘em so I’ve got a moral obligation to look out for you. But once the shooting starts, I can’t, so I wanna hear you say right now that you’re good.”

“I don’t require protection,” argued Lee indignantly.

“I’m not sayin’ you do. I’m asking if you’ll be alright up here,” Britt tapped his temple with his finger, “to go in and do what needs to be done.” 

“I can’t say just now. I won’t know until I get in there.”

“That’s not the sort've answer I was lookin’ for.”

“I’ll be fine. You have to take my word for it. Or don’t.”

Britt knew he wasn’t going to get a better deal than that, so he conceded. Lee was good to his word, but Lee’s mind might have other plans and Britt could only hope those plans didn’t get either one of them killed.

“Britt, Lee, circle up,” called Chris, and they went to join him and the others around a mockup of the village that Chris had drawn in the dirt that had hash marks on several buildings on the eastern side.

“I want to be sure that everyone knows what it means, going back,” said Chris, giving them all one last chance to forfeit their participation.

They knew. They all knew and were choosing to go back anyway.

Chris referred them to the rough layout. “Our one advantage will be height if we can get to it. Whoever can get onto a roof, do it. If you can’t, find a spot to stake out and hold for as long as you can. At least half of them will come out to us but we’ll have to find some other way to smoke out those who don’t. This is it and it’s more important now than it ever was to not take risks if you don’t have to. Unless you know without a doubt that your risk will pay off, don’t take it. There’s only seven of us now unless we manage to free the villagers but that’s one giant ‘if’ that I’m not prepared to gamble on.”

“What’s the signal?” asked Vin.

“It’ll be too sporadic to wait on a signal. From the time we split up until we get to wherever we plan to make our stands, I’ll give it three minutes and then open fire. If we end up having to shoot before then, that’ll just be the roll of the dice. I don’t have to explain the rules of engagement here, not when the enemy doesn’t follow those same rules, but I will say this: if you have a shot with Calvera, take it. His men are loyal to him but they’ll only stay as long as they think they can win and chances are they’ll see the fight as lost if Calvera is dead. The sooner we can put him down, the sooner the fight ends. Any questions?”

As each man swallowed hard and accepted his role in what was to come, they collectively shook their heads. Wordlessly, they mounted up and rode toward what would most likely be their last sunrise.


	6. The Omen of Death

**LEE**

They all had circles under their eyes from riding through the night to reach the village before daybreak. It would be crucial to arrive in time to position themselves as needed to have the sun at their backs and so they didn’t stop for more than two minutes at a time to give the horses rest and didn’t have a chance to even try to sleep on horseback, not that any of them could have managed it if they _had_ tried. Lee wagered that his face would be gaunt and pale if he had had any means to see his reflection, but he was judging based off of the lack of color on Britt’s face. Pure exhaustion made him almost long for that vile concoction Harry had scrounged up—was it only one day ago?

Just one day ago that he had woken with a splitting headache and memories of nightmares? Only twenty-four hours previously he had been offered Harry’s biscuits? How had his life taken so many turns since then? How could so much fit into such a small amount of time?

The village lay just over the hill, still silent and sleepy as it was not yet sunrise. They left their horses tied off and hobbled to prevent them from bolting during the gunfight that was to follow but it was with a feeling of dread that Lee fed Major a handful of oats and rubbed the horse’s muzzle. This would be the last time Lee saw his horse, his one constant traveling companion for almost five years now. It was no exaggeration to say that he cared deeply for Major enough that he said a quick and silent prayer that the horse be placed in kind and capable hands in the event of Lee’s death.

It was not the hardest thing he had ever done, but it was still a difficult decision in tearing himself away and having to ignore Major’s forlorn nickering as he followed Britt up the hill. At the crest, they kept low and surveyed the village below in what little lantern light they had to go by. They had come up just behind the cantina which seemed surprisingly empty. Lee had to inwardly smile at the irony of it: they had been overtaken by Calvera’s men because of a lack of guards and yet they were about to turn the tables on Calvera for being caught in the same fault.

A man as confident and arrogant as Calvera would not think twice about setting up post for the night, for it would not have occurred to him that the enemy he had so casually dismissed would come back. It was idiocy at its finest.

“Any idea where Calvera might be?” asked Vin.

“My first guess would have been the cantina,” said Chris. “I would have thought he’d be celebrating, drinking and toasting himself to victory but since it’s empty, I’d wager he’s in the long hut, just opposite us. It’s the largest building with the most beds where he has plenty of space for his men to protect him.”

“So we clear all the buildings on the east side,” said O’Reilly. “Press in from the east, north, and south, drive them out. He’ll send men to cover his escape but they won’t hold position for long and by then, if we’ve found the villagers, they can square off while we go after him.”

“I thought the point of this was to find him and kill him quick-like?” asked Harry. “If we take the east, we’ll just be shootin’ at each other ‘til we all run outta bullets, then what d’you think’s gonna happen? Think Calvera’s gonna come bargin’ out with a wooden stool to see who the last man standin’ is? Of all the ways this could end, it’s not gonna be in fisticuffs.”

“We don’t have enough time or men to go around and cut off his escape route,” argued Chris. “The plan was to take him out but that was assuming we could get to him at all from our positions. It would have been easier if he had been where we thought he would be, but he’s not, so we have to improvise.”

“That’s your bread and butter, isn’t it?” O’Reilly asked Harry.

“Not when I’m doin’ it blind.”

“Luck is a blind chance,” said Britt. “You don’t get lucky by always knowin’ the outcome.”

As a man who had quite literally made a name for himself in the game of chance, Harry Luck would know this well and Lee suspected it was only his nerves getting the better of him at this point, not that Lee was one to be pointing fingers when he was certain his own nerves were a few steps shy of shattering.

On his left, Chico was breathing rather loudly through his nose in an effort to calm himself. He was determined and adamant to do what he had volunteered to do, but he was still a kid and still afraid. He had every right to be and Lee would have called him a fool if he wasn’t, but it still tugged at his gut to see the willingness to die but the hope to not on such a young face. If only there was something Lee could offer him in these final moments, some form of encouragement and validation that Chico had done the right thing and that this decision was not one to regret.

“Easy,” Lee told the boy quietly. “You’re ready.”

“I’ve never felt less ready,” Chico replied, sounding every part a child half his age.

“If you wait until you _feel_ ready, you’ll be waiting forever. You just have to know, so do you?”

Chico paused, licked his lips, and with one last resolute look at the village that must be so similar to his own, he crossed himself and nodded. “I know.”

“This is it,” said Chris. He looked to his left and right, lingering on each of them for but a second and the silence of the moment reminded them all of their own mortality. This would be the last time they gathered together while they yet drew breath. One way or another, some of them if not all of them would be dead. Their next reunion would be far and away from this world.

Lee could not say he knew them well, nor did he know them for very long but he respected them all and wished them good fortune in this life or the next. He could not offer more thought for them than that for he had gone through this ritual many times and been one of if not the only survivor more times than he could count. He was used to saying farewell to men he had come to acquaint himself with in a few short weeks, though admittedly never this many, never with this great of odds, and never for a purpose such as this. The thought saddened him, but not to the degree if should have.

“It’s gettin’ light,” observed Vin. “Figure we got maybe half an hour until sunup.”

“I’m not sittin’ around for half an hour scratchin’ my ass and waitin’ for someone else t’fire first,” said Harry. “It was three minutes from the time we split up, right?”

“Give it ten, five at the very least,” said Chris. “The darker it is, the likelier we are to catch someone in the crossfire.”

Even the best gunman would need better light than the light that came twenty minutes to sunrise to avoid collateral damage but if they waited much longer, they were risking their chances of being seen before they were ready. Someone would be up and about whether it was to empty a chamber pot, check on the horses, or meander across the street in search of better wares in a different building. Chris was right; if they waited longer than ten minutes they were almost assuredly giving up their advantage and they could not afford to be wasteful.

“Five to ten,” repeated Harry, sounding not at all thrilled.

“Take your positions,” said Chris and clapping Harry on the shoulder, he, O’Reilly, and Chico went off in one direction and Vin went in another, leaving Lee, Britt, and Harry to stake claim on their posts and disperse.

“I’ll take the corral,” said Britt as they watched O’Reilly begin to climb one of the rooftops.

“There’s three or four’ve ‘em lyin’ around in there right now,” said Harry doubtfully.

“Won’t be in five to ten minutes. There’s good coverage there, high walls.” He didn’t need to elaborate. Being the second tallest of their group, it was difficult and sometimes painful for him to crouch behind smaller objects like barrels and tables despite how flexible his lanky form was and so if the corral offered apt protection, no one would fight him on it.

“Your funeral. I think I can reach that roof there,” said Harry, nodding at the building diagonally left from them. “We’ll see you fellas in a bit, then.” He gave a self-satisfied smirk and then slunk off to take his position. It amazed Lee that a man of his size, burly and bulky, could manage to be so quiet as Harry mounted the roof on his stomach and began to shimmy himself forward on the rickety boards.

“Where you goin’?” asked Britt and despite the urgency of the situation, Lee still felt a twinge of annoyance that even now, Britt’s priorities were focused on Lee when they should be elsewhere.

“I’ll figure it out,” he answered vaguely, though he had no idea what his plan was apart from being _somewhere_ when the fight started.

Britt studied his face and then gave an impartial half-shrug. “Alright. Get to where you need to be, then, and good luck.”

Yes, indeed, that was the man Lee knew; the man who asked but didn’t push, the man who recognized when the conversation was over. It was as good of a send-off as any and Lee didn’t want to mull over regrets in last words said between them. It wasn’t in either of their nature.

So Lee simply replied, “You, too,” and was gone.

Vin had gone south to the cantina. Britt, Harry, and O’Reilly were stationed centrally. Chris and Chico had vanished but no one seemed to be covering the north end so Lee stole across the back way, ducking and dodging to avoid open windows as he made his way to the last building along the east side where a large slab of stone dubbed the sentry block had been placed. It provided a fair vantage point of the northeastern mountainside and had been chipped and carved to act as both a post and a place of protection.

Lee stood behind the slab, suddenly aware that he had lost sight of the others completely. He was on his own down at this end and for the first time, he was not happy with that fact. But he had not returned and prepared to enter this fight in the knowledge that he would have others to guard his back.

_Five to ten._

And he felt as if five minutes had already passed which meant in less than five, the gunshots would ring out and he would know if he could—no. No, there would be no _if_. He had made it this far without succumbing to his doubts and six other men were depending on him to swallow his fear, bury it, burn it, stamp it out for good. If he could not fight now, he would bear the blood of each and every one of their deaths without question. It would have been difficult enough living or dying with the knowledge that one man had taken the bullet for him but if he backed out now, he would have six ghosts to contend with that would damn him for his cowardice.

Come the first shot, he would be in that battle whether or not he—

The first shot sounded across the fields as clear as a cannon announcing the military charge. Scattered shouts and confused return fire grew to a din of mindless noise. As Chris had predicted, some men ran into the streets, but not nearly enough to level the odds. The main concentration of fire both delivered and returned seemed to be coming from the center, too far for Lee to even see what was going on.

He observed the building closest to him and the back door that was cracked open ever so slightly to tempt in a nonexistent breeze. He had seen no one rush out of this building but if any bandits remained inside, they would know that all the shots were coming from the south and would not expect an attack from the northeast.

If not now, then never. He knew he was ready.

Lee licked sweat from his upper lip as Britt’s words echoed in his head: _You get to where you need to be._

Where did he need to be? Where was he going? Straight into hell.

He sprinted forward, threw open the door, and barged in and his eyes quickly adjusted to the dark interior. He saw men not dressed in white on either side and fired left and right without bothering to aim, only slamming his hand on the hammer and pulling the trigger with the speed he recognized as an old friend. Not stopping to pause, he burst through the opposite door and dodged immediately to the left to run around the side of the building.

Heart pounding in his throat, he checked his revolver. Two shots left before he had to reload.

He heard what might have been the sound of someone breaking out of the building and so hugging his backside to the wall, he leaned just far enough forward to get an eye on them before firing off his remaining two shots. Then he ran back around to the sentry block and dropped behind it. His quick calculations told him that there were four, perhaps five men inside the building he had just stormed and that he had for sure killed two of them.

He pulled the pin from his revolver cylinder and tipped the opening downward to have gravity aid him in emptying the chambers. Stuffing six more bullets into the cylinder, he snapped it back into place, heard heavy footfalls, and as he stood up, fired at the bandit attempting to rush him. His bullet took the man in the throat.

Now he had to make the decision to run back in the original way he had come or re-enter through the door he had just exited. His success depended on which door the bandits would be guarding. Would they expect him to try the same technique again or to rush back at them from his escape route? The equalizer in this equation was the shotgun his latest victim had just dropped.

Lee snatched it up, checked the chamber for rounds, and finding two, stepped in front of the side window, aiming at an angle toward the front door. With an almighty kick, the shotgun let off two rounds that completely annihilated the woven grass window and gave him a view of the inside where two blood splatters on either side of the front door signified that he had taken out his targets.

Four cautious faces appeared at the window: two women, a boy, and a girl. Lee did not begrudge women the right to fight if they knew how but he very much doubted that these women knew how and what’s more, he knew for a fact that none of them had ever handled a gun. The women seemed to guess Lee’s intentions beforehand and were well aware of their ineptitude with firearms so they began collecting the weapons and gunbelts from the fallen bandits. The children assisted them and then each woman took a door to guard in an admirable if inexperienced display of bravery.

Lee had lingered at this end for too long, as all of the action remained on the opposite end of the village, and so Lee kept his body position low as he ran in front of the eastern buildings, cutting straight through the chaos without bothering to stop. The south end was just as good a place to be as any, for if the bandits were to try and escape, they most certainly would not be heading north. With the cantina on his right, Lee hunkered down.

He still had his wits about him, he was aware and alert, but for how much longer, he didn’t know. Across from him at the archway alongside the church, Vin was popping in and out of sight quick enough to give anyone watching him whiplash. He was keeping the bandits in the houses opposite him under cover to give the rooftop shooters a chance to safely get down now that the fight was starting to spill out onto the street in all directions.

Flashy but accurate, he was a true artist in the ways of hot lead. He was faster than his gun, evident in how nimble he was in dodging about. Lee admired his nerve but a man who danced around death as cleverly as Vin was sure to trip up at some point and now was not the time to test it. Vin’s daring set Lee’s already fragile anxiety on edge and he wanted nothing more than to shout at the man to just stay still, for Vin’s antics had given him a large, hostile audience.

Vin darted across the archway as no less than ten shots churned up the dust at his feet. Lee could not see clearly but it looked as if Vin drew up short momentarily, as if he had run into an invisible barrier. He dropped behind the wall…and he didn’t come back up.

Lee waited, longer than was wise, but he knew that if the man was still alive, he would reappear. If he was wounded, he would tie off his injury and proceed. But he didn’t.

 _One_.

One of seven and Lee had no way of knowing if Vin was the first or not. The fact that he was in the tally at all was more shocking to Lee than anything. Somehow, he expected that if anyone would be the last standing, it would be Vin and Britt but with Vin being one of the first casualties if not _the_ first casualty, it resonated with Lee that experience didn’t matter here. Talent didn’t matter here. It was only fate and luck, neither of which had any reason to be kind to Lee any longer.

A new sound drowned out the gunfire as Lee saw a solid wall of white rippling through the street. The farmers had joined the fight, freed from wherever they were being held and they attacked with a fury despite being armed with one gun in eight of them. They swarmed the street, flooded into the buildings, and red ran swiftly from both sides. The congregation tore after a bandit who had been attempting to flee on horseback but they cut across the horse’s path and tore him from his saddle. Women joined the fray with pickaxes, spades, and clubs. They beat the unseated bandit into submission and far beyond, unaware of several more on horseback riding straight for them with no signs of stopping, slowing down, or dodging. The bandits were on a collision course and not a one of the villagers were aware of the immediate danger they were in.

Lee stood up to rush forward and make them scatter but Chico stepped out into the street between the riders and the villagers, barking over his shoulder for them to clear the way.

Brave, foolish, determined boy. Chico emptied his shotgun at the oncoming bandits before dropping it and switching to his revolver. Lee let off a quick succession of rounds, felling a matching number of riders but their horses continued on without their masters and Lee hollered at the kid to move.

The kid saw Lee, heard him, but faltered as he glanced back to see that there were still villagers in the street, unable to hear Chico’s warnings over the sounds of battle. Chico turned his back to Lee, narrowed his stance to present less of a target, and continued to fire.

Cursing the boy, Lee stood up fully and emptied his revolver at the oncoming riders, as it was the only thing he could do to protect both Chico and the villagers. His last bullet clipped the bandit at the rear of the charge in the jaw and came out the back of his skull. Lee’s moment of nobility cost him his cover as the bandit’s companions realized how very vulnerable he had just made himself. Realizing he had no time to see if Chico had been able to avoid the oncoming riders, Lee backtracked and attempted to start running but his boots refused to gain proper traction in the dirt. With gunfire on his heels, he broke right, dodged between two tables in the cantina, and threw himself behind the bar where it appeared he already had company.

“Where you been?” asked Harry in greeting.

“Around,” returned Lee.

“Where’s everyone else?”

If Harry—who had taken central position in the middle of the battlefield—hadn’t seen any of the others recently besides Lee, it was more than likely that their companions were already down. How many of them remained? There was absolutely no way of knowing right here and now.

The wooden counter above them splintered as a bullet struck it from a high angle and they both tucked their heads into their chest to protect their eyes from flying scraps of wood. From where he was pressed down nearly to the floor to ensure he offered no part of his body for the bandits to shoot at, Harry had a perfect view of the left side of Lee’s gunbelt and nodded at it.

“Missin’ a few bullets there.”

“Used a few,” Lee corrected.

“ ‘Atta boy,” said Harry genially, nudging Lee in the ribs and though this was no moment for levity, Lee could appreciate Harry’s attempts to keep his normal chipper attitude. Besides Britt and Chris, Harry knew Lee’s inner conflict to a certain degree and instead of reprimanding him for having taken so long to find his nerve, Harry was choosing to make light of the situation in the best way he knew how. 

Another bullet split the wooden counter further and Harry beat the debris off of his hat. “Dammit, they’re not even givin’ us a chance to breathe, are they?”

Lee took a knee and then bolted straight up, firing off three rounds and hitting two targets before dropping back down to let the next wave of return fire pass.

“You’re fast. I’d be damn proud if I could draw like that,” said Harry wistfully. He reloaded his Winchester and turned around to face the cabinets and shelves below the bar counter, steeling himself for what was to come next. Together, he and Lee stood up as there came a break in enemy fire. 

Lee’s palm was beginning to bruise with how quickly he was jamming it down onto the hammer and when he ran dry, he slapped Harry’s arm to let him know he was on his own until Lee could reload. 

Harry took cover moments later looking thoroughly peeved at this repetitive game of trading off firing. “This can’t go on forever,” he said as he reloaded once again. “Sooner or later, one’ve us has gotta move.”

“We have to clear a path first,” Lee pointed out. “One obstacle at a time.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder to take their turn in the next rotation of kill-or-be-killed but Harry only got off one shot when he lowered his sights to a body that lay in the street face-down and unmoving.

“Christ, is that the kid?” he asked in horror and Lee followed his gaze to see the curly black hair, the young, battered face, the trampled corpse. Not ten feet from him lay only the body of the bandit the villagers had beaten to death but no villagers. They had cleared the street in time to avoid the charge, but Chico had not.

What had Vin said? “ _I don’t wanna be the one to bury him._ ”

And now Lee would have to bury both of them—if he didn’t join them shortly.

A glass jar exploded near Lee’s face and he felt a shard slice across his cheek as he sought cover. Harry remained standing to pump out the last few shots in his Winchester, roaring incoherently in anger. His rage spilled out of his shotgun and by the sound of it, he was being excessive in downing his targets.

Lee could not reload fast enough as he listened to the fury in this man’s voice. It was actually terrifying to see such a well-intentioned, smiling, good-natured jokester completely dissolve into a man out for blood. Perhaps Harry felt as Lee did at this exact moment: like a failure. They all knew this was a likely outcome for a green boy like Chico but had hoped against hope that their experience would make up for his lack of it. He was the one youngster they hoped to save from the fate of a grave before his time. But fate, it seemed, did not have further plans for the boy.

Harry took an ungainly step back and Lee pulled at his shirt to bring him down to his knees before they were peppered with gunfire once again. Glass shattered above them as more jars burst on impact with bullets passing through them. Lee set about to finish reloading but he did so distractedly as he watched Harry who was now sitting with his back to the shelves staring ahead and attempting to inhale in clipped breaths as if he had an obstruction in his lungs. His hands hugged his stomach and blood spilled from between his fingers, mixing with the heavy dust on the air. 

“Well, lookit that,” he chuckled.

Holstering his weapon, Lee slapped both of his hands over Harry’s wound to add to the pressure already there. He could think of nothing to say, not even when he knew that his chance to say anything at all to Harry was shortening by the second.

To try and shake some sense back into himself, Harry banged the side of his head against one of the shelves, sending its contents tumbling to the ground. “Hey, don’t look so glum. I’m gonna be just fine,” he said brightly as he watched Lee’s face.

“Of course you will,” said Lee to humor him, but more to give himself something to do besides stare at the blood oozing out of Harry’s stomach.

“Hand me my gun, will you?”

It took less than two seconds to find the fallen weapon, push it into its master’s hands, and replace his own on the wound but even that felt like a lifetime. As far as Lee was concerned, he had been sitting here holding in Harry's intestines for an eternity.

“We’re sittin’ ducks if we stay here, y’know,” said Harry almost conversationally as if he was not at this very moment bleeding out. “We gotta run for it.”

Wood exploded in a shower of sawdust above them and Lee shook his head. “We’re pinned. It’s too heavy out there; we’d never make it.”

They had backed themselves into a corner in choosing this as a place of coverage. The enemy knew they were here with no way out and were concentrating all fire on them to weed them out. It had been too long since they had taken their turn, giving the bandits the opportunity to move closer so now the second one of their heads cleared the counter, hellfire would fall on them in swarms.

“No, _we_ wouldn’t,” agreed Harry as he packed his revolver to capacity and locked the cylinder in place. “So go.”

Lee paused, not certain he had heard Harry clearly but the man’s face was set, his mind made up, and before Lee could stop him, he shot a wink Lee’s way, gave a thunderous war cry, and stood up to drew enemy fire. Lee scrambled out from behind the counter and ran. He heard metal meeting soft flesh several times behind him but didn’t dare look back. To look back was to waste the precious time that man had just given to him and Lee owed it to him to run for all he was worth.

But there was nowhere to run to. Gunfire came from all sides and Lee now had no way of knowing which was friendly and which was hostile. He assumed his previous position the last time he had seen battle and flattened himself against the outer cantina wall as he sank down below eye-level with one knee to his chest and the other beneath him.

He wiped what he thought was sweat from his eyes but was surprised to find that the dampness came from a different origin and he knew a pang in his chest. Was it panic? Was it exhaustion and adrenaline? Was it expended effort? He couldn’t say. It had been more than two decades since he had last shed a tear. Perhaps it was just part of battle yet unknown to him or perhaps he had known that man inside the cantina better than he thought.

Lee heard fast approaching footsteps coming from behind the building on his right. He wouldn’t have time to hesitate once they came into view. He had to make the decision to fire now. A sombrero cleared the building, followed by a bloody face, and Lee put a bullet in the man’s nose. The bandit’s grip on his shotgun went lax and as it hit the ground before its owner, it discharged on its own, setting Lee’s eardrum to burst.

He dropped his head down and ground his teeth together to alleviate the sound. In a repetitive loop that engrained itself in his brain and made his heart lodge in his throat, he imagined Harry’s body crumpling as numerous shots peppered him. What that must have felt like, he couldn’t even begin to conceive, but it had happened and even though he had not seen with his own eyes, he knew what it must have looked like. Lee felt every shot wrack his body and then felt a scream rising deep in his sternum but never heard it as it exited his mouth. He pressed his hands over his ears, curling inward to somehow shield himself from what didn’t exist. Harry’s last moments struck him hard and he knew the man had died in pain.

 _Not for me_. The words Lee had told Britt, never imaging that someone else could possibly do what he had told Britt not to. And of all people, Harry Luck, the self-professed self-serving man.

He hated the circumstances that had led to this. How dare life be so cruel as to deal him this hand and make him live long enough to see another man die for him? How dare life throw everything he loathed and feared at him in these moments? The gunfire, the shouting, the overwhelming odds, the death of a friend.

Gripped by overwhelming panic, lost in his own head, Lee felt his fingernails contract into his scalp through his gloves. He was trying so desperately hard to hold on, to make sense of something, but his vision was full of dead bodies, those of the men he had seen die today, those of the people he had seen die over a lifetime of blood and murder.

His head was ringing, blood was pounding in his ears, he couldn’t see…

Someone had a hold on the back of his vest and was dragging him flat as bullets rained down on them. Whoever his savior was, he was pressing the side of Lee’s face hard into the dirt but it was a lucky thing for Lee could hear the closeness of the missed shots above. If Lee had lifted his head, he would have caught a bullet or ten.

Then, when there was a respite in gunfire, that same someone hauled him backwards toward one of the newly built walls and Lee had to make an effort to keep control of his limbs which seemed to have developed a mind of their own, jerking about in an unwilling dance. Once his rescuer had him safely tucked up against the wall, he sat him up and Lee blinked several times to see Britt—of course it was Britt—shaking him by the shoulders. As willing as Lee was to let this fit of insanity pass, his mind was unwilling to let him go without and fight and so he dug his knuckles into his temples. He hammered his palms against the sides of his head, anything to make it clear and to blot out those memories and visions of massacre. Then Britt had his hands on Lee’s collar and shook him once more, this time with enough force that Lee felt his neck was in danger of snapping. He couldn’t hear just yet but he read the words on Britt’s lips: _look at me!_

Britt delivered a hard slap to Lee’s cheek that left the skin stinging, but also brought him back into full alertness. His head stopped spinning, his eyes refocused, the ringing and pounding ceased and sound gradually grew back to full volume just in time for him to hear Britt say, “Dammit, I asked you if you would be alright comin’ back in here. _This_ isn’t alright!”

“I’m fine,” Lee insisted, surprised that he was able to speak at all.

With one hand still on Lee’s collar, Britt pulled him slightly closer and his grey-blue eyes focused unblinkingly on him. “No bullshit now, Lee. If you can’t do it, I need you to run. If you can’t lift that gun and do what needs to be done with it, I need you to turn around and run.”

There was fear and concern disguised underneath that anger. Britt had not given him an order to run for the sake of others but because it would displace Lee from the battle and ensure his safety, thus giving Britt peace of mind. Britt had not seen him since before the battle and had no idea what had occurred between then and now. He had not seen Lee make those kills before his relapse and didn’t know that Lee was far from finished.

“Cover your ears,” said Lee calmly.

As an experienced marksman and a fighter on all accounts, Britt did not question the order. He pressed his hands over his ears and Lee let off a round right next to his head, felling the bandit who had rushed them from behind.

“I’m good,” he told Britt as the enemy body dropped.

That was as much conversation as they were able to have, for their cover was exposed when they heard mad shouting and then saw a man rushing at them with the intent to physically strike with his machete. Britt went for his revolver but the bandit reached them too soon and Britt threw himself at the enemy, grabbing the latter around the legs to bring him down. They both disappeared behind another wall.

Lee couldn’t very well leave Britt to finish the bandit off on his own. He had to move into a position that would allow him to take the man out while simultaneously taking care to not shoot Britt and so he left the safety of the wall and took several steps back. He had no better angle from here so he moved again and finally saw the dueling pair trying to bash the other’s skull in on the ground.

He stood there one second too long and felt hot metal pass through his right arm. Throwing out his good arm, he fell forward and landed hard in the dirt as he heard the rifle report. The pain was blinding as spasms rippled through his arm, up to his shoulder, and then down into the rest of his body. His first, irrational thought was that when he looked down, his arm would be gone at the elbow but he forced himself to remain calm to discover the extent of the damage.

Testing the dexterity in his arm, he concluded that the bullet had broken his elbow and left him crippled to his trade. He passed his revolver into his left hand, flexing his fingers experimentally around its grip. It would be far too easy to cower at this very moment and wait for the fighting to end, one way or another, but he did not have that option anymore. He could say that he was nothing without his gunhand but in truth, the dominant hand was only half the requirement. A gunman could shoot with either hand and it would make little difference if he was unable, unwilling to commit to the shot. A gunman had to have the resolve to kill and that resolve either came from the enjoyment and thrill of danger, or out of necessity. The novelty of being experienced in his craft had long since worn off and he had killed at least five men this day out of a need to prove to himself that he was not the surrendering sort.

But now that he had done his part, proven his point, and been wounded for it, did he have any reason to fight? If a man approached him right now and drew on him, would he kill out of necessity or because he wanted to?

The decision was made for him when he remembered that he had a duty to more than just himself in this fight. He saw Britt still grappling with the bandit in what had become just shy of a tooth and nail fight. Both men had lost their hats as well as their revolvers and were now dealing only in steel: Britt’s switchblade against the other man’s machete. The blades were unevenly matched but it would be the skill with those blades that won out in the end, not the length. It turned into an upright battle as the bandit swung at Britt and brushed the sharpened side of his machete against Britt’s hip. The attack opened a thin, precise line, but Britt battled on, ignoring his injury. It was pure luck that that cut had not been more severe, as Britt had little to no meat on him at all and a stab wound that normally would meet only flesh on some men would pass completely through him. Britt was taller, but his opponent was heavier and used Britt’s lack of weight against him, squeezing his fingers hard around Britt’s wrist to the hand that held his knife.

Tangling Britt’s long legs with one of his own, the bandit tripped him but grabbed a fistful of hair as the former lost his balance and then smashed Britt’s face onto one of the tables sitting outside the cantina. Britt recovered quickly though his nose was almost certainly broken if not fractured as blood spilled from both of his nostrils. The bandit wrapped a hand around Britt’s throat but he underestimated Britt’s desperation, for he was unprepared for what happened next.

Britt jabbed his elbow into his opponent’s gut and then bit down hard on the man’s hand until Lee saw him spit out what had to be the man’s finger in a savage but brilliant act. He regained his feet, and tried to lunge with his knife but the length of his arm did not make up for the length of the blade and he came up short. Down one finger, the bandit rammed into him, slamming Britt back-first into the outer cantina wall and driving his knee up into Britt’s stomach. Winded, Britt doubled over and the bandit prepared to hack Britt’s head off at the neck from above.

Lee planted his stance, lifted his left arm, and aimed. His bullet brushed the bandit across the shoulder. He fired again and hit the man’s left buttock. A final shot through the spine finished him off and Britt straightened up and looked about for the source of the bullets that had felled his opponent. In the haze and chaos, he couldn’t locate Lee but moved forward to the half-wall where his revolver had fallen. As he turned away from Lee to look in the opposite direction, a lone shot rang out.

Red blossomed from the back of Britt’s shirt and he stooped over the wall, clutching his shoulder with his non dominant hand as the other held his knife—the only weapon left to him. 

Once again the battlefield grew quiet, eerily so, but not from a discharging weapon close to Lee’s ear. The blood was pounding again behind his eyes, his heart hammered in his throat as his stomach seemed to drop out of his body. His legs were carrying him forward, his pain forgotten as he closed the distance between himself and the man Lee believed to be invincible.

Britt saw Lee running to him and tried to wave him off but instead toppled sideways and hit the ground hard on his stomach. He was still very much alive when Lee reached him but the wide-eyed shock on his face suggested that he might have not been entirely aware of his surroundings. His arms were trapped under him from how he had fallen and he didn’t seem to be capable of wiggling them out or sitting up on his own. Lee pulled him up by his good shoulder and as he turned his friend over, he saw red staining Britt’s teeth with some of it dribbling down his chin. Whether that was from biting the bandit’s finger off, a byproduct of his broken nose, or from the wound in his shoulder, Lee didn’t know.

The knife was still clasped in Britt’s right hand and the vice-like grip he had on it suggested that Lee would have to break his fingers to pry it loose. His left hand was pressed over his wound, higher up and opposite the shoulder blade.

Lee found Britt’s gun on the ground beside them and pushed it into its owner’s hand in the hope that the feel of the grip would root his friend in the present and keep him busy so Lee could examine the wound without Britt’s fingers interfering. Britt held on to his weapon but didn’t raise it as he took in the sight of Lee as if wondering where he had come from. It was new territory seeing Britt look so bewildered and unaware and Lee didn’t care for it at all. The wound must have hurt something terrible to make such a devoted, focused, professional man look completely lost in his element.

Seeing the blood on Lee’s shirt and the awkward position that he held his arm, Britt managed to gasp out, “You hit?”

Grateful that at least Britt was still capable of speech, Lee let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. “Yeah, I’m hit. Now, watch my back so I can have a look at you.”

“Did it go all the way through?”

Lee gingerly turned Britt onto his uninjured side and felt around in the mess of blood and cotton for an exit wound. Finding a sizeable hole in Britt’s back and an even bigger one at his front, he confirmed, “All the way through.”

“Good. Help me up.”

“You’re done,” said Lee firmly and snatched Britt’s weapon away for good measure. “The only thing you’ll do if you go out there is die.”

“You’ve got no right takin’ my gun from me,” Britt snapped. This, denying him his right to use his own weapon, was one of the few things he didn’t tolerate and even in so much pain, even discombobulated and drained, it infuriated him. “Not until I’m dead and in the ground. Give it back.”

“I will once I have your word—“

“I’m not gonna sit here waitin’ to die.”

“You’re not and you won’t, but I can’t let you go out there when I know you’ll fall right back over if you can even stand up. You’re going to stay right here and you’re going to agree with me or I’m not giving you back your gun. I want to hear you say it, Britt.”

Grimacing at his own words used against him but then allowing that grimace to give way to a reluctant and feeble grin, Britt nodded. “Okay.”

“Reload for me.”

Britt stuck his switchblade into the soft clay of the wall above him and began the reloading process but another glance at Lee’s broken elbow prompted him to ask, “You ever fought with your left before?”

“Ask him.” Lee nodded at the bandit with three of Lee’s bullets in him.

They both jumped as a shot went off dangerously close to them from what seemed like above.

“That came from the rooftop,” said Britt. “Can you see, is it Harry?”

Lee had the slightest pause before admitting in a quieter and more somber tone than he thought he could muster, “Harry’s gone.” He fought back the vision of Harry lying dead behind the bar.

Britt regarded him with confusion as if to ask if Harry had come to his senses and abandoned the villagers to their fate like he initially intended but then that confusion dissolved into denial and finally fury.

“Did you see it?”

“I saw three,” Lee admitted.

The gravity of the situation, the reality that their allies were dwindling, it cut deep and Britt hung his head, biting into his lower lip for but a moment to gather himself before asking, “How many left?”

“Us, maybe one more.”

Lee counted them in his head: Chico in the street, Vin beside the church, Harry in the cantina. That meant Chris and O’Reilly were unaccounted for. So focused had he been on his six companions that he had spared no time or thought to see if the battle was tilting in their favor thanks to the addition of the villagers. Somehow, the ultimate goal of winning this battle had not occurred to him at all, only the survival of the seven who had started it. Now with three certainly dead, two possibly dead, and one who could very well be on his way out, Lee was starting to consider that he might be the last, the sole survivor. And he absolutely could not, would not, live with that.

“You wanna run for it?” asked Britt in observation of Lee’s face as Lee processed this information. It was a noble and heartfelt intention that even as he lay bleeding and possibly dying, Britt was still trying to give Lee an escape route. Now, however, it was not because he thought Lee incapable of holding his ground and staying mentally present but because Lee was his friend. He couldn’t know that his words were almost verbatim what Harry had told Lee and to have to listen to two men tell him that, it churned Lee’s stomach.

He peeked over the wall and saw three men abandoning their posts to flee toward the corral. He emptied his revolver in his attempt to shoot them down but only managed to take out one with his non-dominant-handed aim.

“Can _you_ run?” Lee returned as he tossed his gun into Britt’s lap and Britt traded off his own fully loaded weapon.

“No.”

“Then no, I don’t want to run for it.”

“Don’t you stay here and get yourself killed over me.”

“I’ll try not to. Reload.”

“No, you listen to me,” snapped Britt, grasping Lee’s arm in a bloody grip. “If ever you listened to me, listen now. _Don’t_.”

The irony of the reversal of fortunes here was not lost on Lee. If anything, it humbled him and shook him to his core that he had demanded that Britt not be a martyr for him and now Britt was begging the same of him. It struck a chord with Lee to discover that his friend, his longest and oldest and at many times _only_ friend, shared a common fear with Lee in that he did not want another man to die for him. And not even any man but quite specifically Lee. What a hypocrite.

Lee heard more men coming, knew they would be swamped in the next few seconds, and was determined not to die on his knees. Britt would try to stop him if he could, given what he had just asked of Lee, but Lee didn’t need Britt’s permission. He made ready to stand.

“What’re you doin’?” asked Britt.

Effectively, the same thing that Harry had done, only he was hoping for a better outcome. This bordered on the verge of stupidity and bravery but he didn’t care to contemplate which. Cradling his broken arm to his chest, he held Britt’s revolver in his right hand, his own in his left, and with the fresh memory of Harry rising up to face the enemy alone, he let his legs lift him into firing position. He didn’t wait and didn’t aim, simply turned his body to the left and fired. Three men went down, and a fourth, and a fifth, and then Lee staggered back as a bullet grazed his outer thigh. He fired again and saw two more men fall from their horses before another bullet found its mark in Lee’s right bicep just above the one that had broken his elbow. 

His wounded leg gave out on him and he allowed himself to fall into the dirt but kept both revolvers pointed up as he waited for the bandits to close in again. From his terrible vantage point of staring down his body length, he saw two heads clear the wall and let off two of his four remaining bullets. The bodies fell, Lee waited perhaps fifteen seconds for more to appear, and when none did, he allowed his head to collapse back on the ground.

His hat had fallen off and lay out of reach but he didn’t try to grab it. Such an artificial thing, but a part of his identity and he would prefer to die wearing it but he had to be selective with his energy and movements and reaching for his hat didn’t seem to be a wise usage of either.

How long he lay there in blissful denial of his body’s needs, he didn’t know. He almost couldn’t feel the pain if he could just detach himself from his connection to his wounded body. In the back of his mind, he wondered if it would be so bad to die here, if dying was as terrible as he had always believed, but he wasn’t dying—far from it. He hadn’t been shot anywhere to deal him a mortal blow which meant the places where he _had_ been shot were simply on fire.

“Lee…”

Britt’s voice seemed to come from a great distance, but he knew it could only have been two, three feet at the most.

“Lee?” Britt asked again, this time with more urgency.

“I’m still alive.”

There was no mistaking that grunt of relief.

His entire right side might as well have been severed from his body for all the good it was doing him as he rolled onto his stomach, turned around and began pulling himself along the ground with his left hand. When he was close enough to Britt to grab the latter’s boot, Britt took hold of his wrist and dragged him forward, wincing with every movement. Finally, Lee collapsed in a gasping heap beside Britt and returned his now empty revolver to him.

“Reload.”

“Where’re you hit?”

Pain was coming from too many different areas of his body to know for sure. His brain tried to recall exactly where he had been wounded but his thoughts were scrambled on such unimportant information. All that mattered right now was to keep firing regardless of his wounds.

Britt nudged him with his elbow to prompt a response.

“I don’t rightly know.”

“Can you stand?”

“Probably not. Can you?”

Britt shot him an incredulous look and Lee nodded in understanding that that had been a stupid question to ask.

“I’ve got three left in my belt,” Britt concluded as he finished loading his revolver for Lee’s usage. “How many do you have?”

“Four on the belt, two in the guns,” said Lee, feeling for occupied slots in his belt.

“Save two of those.”

Lee didn’t need to ask why; a man with living enemies knew why. 

The moments dragged by in a sluggish haze and Lee could not remember firing until he found himself taking the last two bullets and placing them in the cylinder. Each click of metal against metal as the shell settled at the far end of the cylinder echoed tenfold in Lee’s ears. Of one thing, he certainly had not expected to die and that was to be caught empty-handed in a fight. He expected his end to come quickly before he even knew that he had been shot. He expected to be dead with no warning, not waiting for death because he had run dry of ammunition. Sitting and waiting for someone to approach him, point the business end of a gun at him, and having to watch that bastard fire into his face was not the way Lee was prepared to go.

These final two bullets would spare him and Britt that fate, if only they had the courage to pull the trigger. But what if one of them went through with it, only for the battle to end in their favor, leaving the other to live with that memory of his friend committing suicide and wishing he would have waited just a few moments longer? Much thought had to go into this final, violent act, but they didn’t have the time for those thoughts.

Lee snapped the cylinder back into place and set his revolver in his lap. Should they wait? Should they get it over with? It would take the rest of Lee’s strength to sit up far enough to see over the wall to give him any sort of idea how the battle was swaying and he didn’t think he could accomplish it. But he couldn’t put a bullet in his mouth without knowing. He had to know in his heart that he had done every last thing he could before giving in.

Halted by indecision, Lee ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.

Britt had to have sensed the conflict within him, for he held open bloody his right hand to Lee. Grimacing at the stabbing pain the movement caused, Lee lifted his own right hand to his mouth to pull his glove off with his teeth. He grasped Britt’s hand and shook it firmly, surprised to find the sweat of fear in the other man’s hold but he knew his fared no better. Both were steady.

It was time.

A bullet missed Lee’s ear by less than half an inch and he instinctively threw his good arm over his head but as he did, he saw the figure emerging from the dust. A red shirt, a brown vest, the grinning face of a man who knew he had his prey closed in for good. This was exactly what Lee had seen in his nightmares, what he had been waiting for since the moment he first picked up his weapon nineteen years ago. The bullet in the gun that was faster than his belonging to what had been a faceless man until now.

And he felt anger, pure, unadulterated rage that it had to be _this_ man to pull the trigger. _This_ damnable bastard was going to send him to his maker and Lee could do nothing about it. He never even had time to lift his weapon to die in action rather than waiting for the end to come. Instead he heard two shots erupt from Britt’s revolver and in the ringing in his ears that followed, Lee thought he also heard a body collapse.

Delayed in his response to the death that had just occurred in front of him, he raised his gun, waiting for the shape of the man to appear again. He opened his mouth and moved his jaw about to speed up the process of ridding himself of the ringing, ready to shoot down what would be his last enemy, but no one came.

When he could at least partially hear out of his left ear, he asked, “Was that him?”

“Couldn’t say.” Britt checked his weapon and then let it drop to the ground as he pulled his knife out of the clay to arm himself one last time. “I’m out.”

That was Lee’s invitation to use the last two bullets but he didn’t just yet. He set the back of his head against the wall and let his eyelids close, listening to the sounds of battle. The gunshots were occurring with longer pauses between return fire. The raucous hollering seemed further away. Pounding hooves were nonexistent. It was almost peaceful, almost normal like the background noise in any town north of the border. It sounded like home...

“It’s getting quiet,” he said after a few minutes.

Britt gave no response.

Lee opened his eyes but refused to turn his head even a centimeter to the left for fear of seeing a dead man beside him. He could not tell if there was a temperature differentiation in the shoulder pressed against his because it was covered in blood. Dreading what he might find, he fumbled around for Britt’s wrist and touched two fingers to the inside. The pulsing that he felt against his skin was slow but strong and very much present. It appeared that Britt was only unconscious, though for how much longer before that took a permanent turn for the worse was hard to say.

And still Lee could not find the courage to shoot his friend in the temple. If the sounds of battle were fading, did that mean that the villagers had driven the enemy away? Or were there simply no more villagers to fight back and the bandits were now closing in on the survivors one by one? Could Lee not make sense of things because he was losing blood or disorientated from that last shot from Britt’s revolver? Surely he could not be dying; he had not been shot severely enough for any of those bullets to be fatal. He must simply be delusional.

Britt’s head dropped onto Lee’s shoulder and Lee stiffened his posture, holding his breath to wait to feel movement from Britt in the form of an exhale. The seconds dragged on until time no longer existed. Nothing existed apart from Britt, the wall behind them, and the dull pain in Lee’s body. He could hold his breath no longer; he would have to look. Craning his neck sideways, Lee removed his other glove and held his hand in front of Britt’s nose and mouth…

Warm air spread across Lee’s palm. Still alive, still holding on. For now.

Lee straightened up, grasping his revolver with new resolve. He would give it another minute, maybe two, and then he would stand up. If the battle had gone ill, only then would he use his last two bullets. If by some heaven-sent miracle they had won, he would scream for help until his throat bled but he would not sit and wait for fate to come to them. If his nightmares had been omens of death and if Britt had promptly shot those omens in the chest, what then, remained to fear?

Biting into his lower lip, Lee prepared to stand, hoping his good leg could bear all of his weight when his body felt so utterly useless and heavy. He had his left leg tucked in and was pressing his back to the wall when he saw a black silhouette approaching in that cool-headed prowl he knew quite well. A sound tried to escape him, perhaps a chuckle or a sigh of relief, but he only managed to choke on the dryness in his mouth which dissolved into a violent hacking cough.

He dropped his revolver in the dirt with a resounding finality. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if the length of this chapter is a good or bad thing considering that all the previous ones have been relatively short but I didn't want to split the battle into two chapters, as I wanted it to be a seamless scene from Lee's POV. Sorry in advance for the delay--if any --in posting the final chapter. Final chapters are the bane of my existence as they're always so difficult to wrap up without being a sappy, cliché mess.


	7. Once More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote, edited, deleted, and repeated this process so many times with this chapter because I could not find an ending I was content with. If you've read anything else I've written, I always leave a disclaimer about how I feel about endings in that I don't approve of "happy" wrap-ups and all the clichés that accompany those types of endings but I also just hate bringing my stories to a close. I've struggled with ending this one far more than I have with any other fic but I couldn't tell you why, so here it is, whatever it is. 
> 
> I'm happy that I finally wrote this story, however short it may be, but I wish I didn't have such ill thoughts about the ending. Thanks to those of you who have dropped in and sorry to those who dropped out.

**LEE**

Some sense of reality returned to him as the hazy outline of the man in black became clearer. Lee was not surprised to see Chris still alive, though he was quite irked that the man had managed to avoid wounds as damaging as Lee and Britt’s. In fact, as the details on Chris’s face sharpened, Lee would go so far as to say that the former looked positively unscathed. Fortune had been with him this day while it had made Lee and Britt work and fight for every extra second of life.

Chris stood over them and Lee moved his good shoulder where Britt’s head was still resting to try and rouse him. A sharp intake of breath, a cough, and a moan later, Britt brought himself back into consciousness as Chris took a knee and rested a hand upon each of their arms in reassurance that their battle was over, their bravery well received and their rest now earned.

“O’Reilly?” asked Lee.

“He’s holding on,” said Chris. “Harry?”

Lee shook his head and then continued to hold Chris’s gaze to silently confirm what Chris already suspected. This was it: four of seven with the possibility of it being three or two if Britt and O’Reilly were not seen to immediately.

Chris touched a finger to the exit wound in Britt’s shoulder, dangerously close to his chest wherein sat his lungs. Over his shoulder, Chris hollered for assistance, asking for six men to help carry both Lee and Britt.

A cluster of able-bodied villagers crowded around them and Chris tapped Britt’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Britt, I need you to say something.”

It was impossible for him to form words but Britt did manage to let out a pained, warbled groan that built up to a shriek of agony when Chris tried to pull him forward to get a better look at the entrance wound. With his eyes now wide and bulging, fresh blood coming up between his teeth and, heaving breaths preparing him for what was about to come next, Britt fixed Chris with a glare that was nevertheless accepting.

“I know it hurts, but let me do what I can for you,” said Chris.

Biting down into his lip, Britt managed to swallow most of his next scream as Chris took both of his arms and gently pulled him forward until he was bent over his own legs. Britt stuck his bloodied knife blade in his mouth and clamped his teeth along it. Three of the villagers including Hilario lifted Britt by the legs, arms, and backside and bore him away whilst he never made more than a sharp grunt of pain. It took an enormous amount of self-discipline and a strong will to be able to hold in what was undoubtedly painful noises longing to come out. He was carried out of Lee’s sight before Chris turned his attention to Lee.

“Let’s get you up.”

“Him first,” Lee insisted.

“We have him and he’s in good hands. There’s more than enough people to tend to the both of you at the same time—“

Feeling his voice grow stronger in what was either stout stubbornness or previously concealed but now mounting hysteria and fury, Lee argued, “I have two flesh wounds and a broken elbow. He took a bullet in the shoulder. He goes first.”

“Lee—“

“I have exactly two bullets left in this revolver and I will use both of them on any man who touches me.” He knew delirium was setting in and that once he passed out from the pain, they would tend to him regardless of his demands and so this adamant stance was more for show than anything but somehow it made sense to him as a form of gratitude for all Britt had done for him to have his friend seen first.

“Alright, Britt first,” agreed Chris, though Lee knew he was only indulging him. “But at least let me help you inside.”

“I can make it just fine on my own.”

“Show me.”

Shooting Chris a loathsome look, Lee did not even begin to feign strength he did not have and held up his hand for help. Chris pulled him upright with a strong hand and a firm stance, though Lee felt a rush of blood to his head and swayed as soon as both of his boots were planted. Chris looped Lee’s arm around his shoulders, put a hand on his waist, and half-carried him to the cantina where a makeshift infirmary had been set up.

The wounded lay here and there with some on the ground, some atop tables, and some on blankets to keep the dust out of their injuries. More men than Lee could count while in this disorientated state, but enough to know that the reason for the victory this day was thanks to the villagers who had fought nearly bare-handed and sacrificed every last ounce of their courage to take back their home. Whatever Lee and his fellow gunmen had suffered, it was not enough, never would be enough to compensate for what was given by these people whose village this was.

Chris set Lee down just below where the cantina canopy ended and Lee had a frontal view of the dilapidated counter. What was left of it was splattered in blood and as Lee’s eyes trailed to the right, he saw a boot just visible on the ground beside it. It seemed that the dead had not yet been collected or else no one had noticed the body when so many were scattered about but it did not sit right with Lee that a man who had given his life for a cause he had no obligation to support was still laying in the dirt as if his body mattered less.

“Harry…” he said to Chris, struggling to give sense to his words before he was completely claimed by disorientation. “Harry’s there…” Chris traced his gaze and when his eyes fell upon Harry’s boot, that solemn expression that was most unbecoming on him made its way back onto his face.

“I’ll get him.”

Lee craned his neck in the other direction to try and see where Britt had been taken but could not spot his friend anywhere. With a wound as grievous as Britt’s, perhaps it required a bit more privacy and silence than the bedlam happening around Lee at the moment with women and children rushing this way and that to lend assistance where they could. Run for water, rip up sheets for bandages, apply pressure here, hold a man down there. All words, none of which Lee understood until they were put into action.

Ten minutes went by, then a day, then a lifetime and he was still in full awareness of his pain and his location while nothing seemed to happen beyond the place where his boots ended. He took stock of his neighbor to the right and saw that it was a man he knew only by the surname Ortega. The man on his left he also only knew by last name, but knew him better—and he was dying.

One of O’Reilly’s hands was balled into a fist on the ground while the other was squeezing over his midsection in an attempt to keep his innards from spilling out. For as many gunshot wounds Lee had seen during his lifetime, he had never seen a man still alive after being shot at point-blank range with a shotgun. He knew there was no salvaging this man’s life, O’Reilly knew it, and so had Chris, which would explain why he had said O’Reilly was still hanging on as opposed to being out of danger.

He had minutes left, at most, and they would be agonizingly slow. He would die without anyone knowing, without anyone to see. Lee reached over and rested his hand atop O’Reilly’s fist and worked it open with some difficulty before grasping the man’s fingers. O’Reilly tilted his head sideways to look at Lee, to thank him with all he had to offer: an expression.

It was a terrible thing, loneliness, and Lee had reveled in it for too long. It had brought him nothing. To live amongst people he cared for would have brought heartache for when he had to leave them or when they were targeted and murdered because of his trade but it had taken near on twenty years for that same ache to be felt in isolation. It was a slow death, killing him at its leisure. And he would wish this fate on no one else, so he was adamant that he would sit here and keep hold of O’Reilly until the man passed even though it went against every rule Lee had given himself and every instinct he had known for years.

Attachment was what had dragged him into this profession to begin with and he had made it a strict policy to cut ties with anyone who tried to earn his acquaintance with the idea of friendship on their mind. Britt had stomped on that policy and reintroduced Lee to the barest and most limited human interaction and it was thanks to the former that Lee was now able to maintain physical touch with another being. He had come to resent it after all these years, even fear it, but it was not so terrible of a thing and he found that he had been neglecting his need for it for so long that he was now malnourished to it.

Suddenly there stood a woman before him who took one look at his bloodied clothes and set about to try and remove his vest. Lee squirmed at the invasive touch as he had not been prepared to be worked on while still conscious. He kept hold of O’Reilly and attempted to push the woman away with his leg when Chris returned, his own hands bloody for a reason Lee did not want to guess.

“Let her help you.”

“I said—“

“You said any man. She’s a woman, and she’s going to help you.”

Only then did Lee realize that he knew this woman, as she was one of the two who he had rescued at the onset of the battle, those who had taken up arms to protect the children. It should not have made a difference in his insistence against being tended to, but he relented since there was nothing to be gained by doing otherwise.

The woman opened his vest, rolled up the remains of his bloodied sleeve, and began arranging the broken bits of his elbow bone into what she deemed to be the appropriate position before taking two thin strips of wood and wrapping them tight—painfully tight—around his forearm and bicep. The more she worked on him, the hazier she became until Lee’s vision had gone completely dark.

He drifted, never settling, always moving. Pain was a distant thing, but it kept him rooted and let him know he was still alive, somewhere. And all the while, he felt pressure in his left hand…

/ /

Hours later, the hand in his was cold and unmoving. Night had fallen and the cantina around him was all but empty. Apparently no one had had so serious of an injury that they had been unable to find more accommodating shelter. Those who had succumbed must have been moved to give less of an appearance that the cantina was now a morgue.

Lee stretched his legs and found that his right thigh had been bandaged without doing him the discourtesy of removing his trousers. He had no way of knowing but he suspected that both of the bullets in his arm had been removed. A blanket had been placed around his shoulders since his right arm was bare from the wrist up after having been cut out of his shirt to access the wound. Every muscle in his body was stiff and unwilling to cooperate as he sat up but as he did, he became aware of the stone-cold fingers wrapped around his.

Someone had laid a sheet over O’Reilly but left his and Lee’s hold intact and in the moonlight, O’Reilly’s hand was washed over in blue. His grip on Lee’s hand had contracted, hardened, and solidified at the end, leaving Lee locked in a deathly handshake.

He felt a sickly prickling in his stomach, but he could not say why. He had seen dead bodies, many of them long after the decaying process had begun and O’Reilly was not even twenty-four hours dead yet. He had smelled rotting corpses and O’Reilly had no odor. And then it struck him that he had been unconscious when O’Reilly died. He had made the decision to keep hold of this man until the latter died, yet he had not been mentally present when O’Reilly finally gave in. It was stupid and senseless to consider this a failure, yet Lee did.

Could he do right by no one this day? First Chico in the street, then Harry behind the counter, and now O’Reilly on his deathbed. And Britt—

Britt.

Lee swallowed his nausea and set about to twisting his fingers out of O’Reilly’s dead-locked grip without breaking any on either side. He heard a couple of cracks but assured himself that was only the pressure in O’Reilly’s joints releasing as Lee finally pulled his numb hand free. Setting O’Reilly’s hand down upon his chest and patting it in farewell, Lee rolled over onto his good leg and pushed himself up into kneeling position.

It took a moment to find his balance but when he did, he kept it as he looked about for anyone who could tell him where Britt had been taken—or where the dead were being kept. There was no one about, not that he found that particularly odd when the survivors would most certainly be asleep or holding candlelit vigils for their fallen friends and family.

It was only when he started walking toward the northern end of the street that he saw a small shelter had been erected alongside one of the buildings. A few blankets had been stretched and pinned up in place as a type of lean-to to keep the elements off of the line of bodies underneath.

And there right in front of Lee where he easily could be stepped on was Britt.

Wherever they had taken him to rest following the task of stopping the bleeding and sealing off the wound, he had refused to stay there. He sat with his back to a wooden support column alongside the dead. His head hung over with his chin resting on his uninjured shoulder as he slept. His right arm had been suspended and secured against his chest to not disturb the wound. He was extremely pale and unnaturally thin as if the blood he had lost had somehow made his slender frame even thinner. The pale, sunken face was such a stark contrast to the healthy one Lee knew that was always full of color and life if not particularly active and though the blood had been cleaned off of it, there was a cut across the bridge of his nose and dark patches beneath his closed eyelids as a result of having his face slammed into a table.

Truly, he looked to be an absolute mess and not at all the conquering hero that he should have been—would have been—if things had not gone so horribly wrong from the moment Lee joined the thick of the battle. Lee was not so desperate for a soul to blame that he would take all the credit for the deaths of his companions, but one death was absolutely on him and Britt’s condition was a result of Lee being too slow to provide cover fire. Britt’s attention had been on Lee when that thuggish bandit charged, otherwise Britt could have shot him down before it could escalate to a one-on-one fight where Britt had been given the rudest of awakenings to physical altercations. The bullet he earned at the end of that fight had just been the devil seeing how far he could push Lee until he snapped.

But Lee had found himself once again as soon as he heard that gun report and seen the blood on Britt’s shirt. Seeing his friend wounded had done the complete opposite in fueling his former unchallenged, unquestionable skill. He had come back alive in the face of potential loss but Britt’s fate was still attributed to him, whichever way the hammer fell.

Britt made no movement as Lee draped the blanket from his own shoulders over Britt’s legs, but this only troubled Lee further. For a man who could fall asleep so easily, Britt never stayed asleep for long and slept lightly so for him to not even stir despite Lee’s loud movements beside him, he must truly have been a guest on death’s doorstep. Lee thought to try and wake him more forcefully but decided against it for the moment as he knelt beside the first of many bodies lying alongside Britt.

The dead had been placed side by side but not quite touching. Among them were some villagers Lee knew by sight but not by name, some he _did_ know by name, and the three gunmen (O’Reilly would be added in the morning, he suspected). In a village of some fifty men and about half that number of women, ten were dead. Miguel, Velasco, and Rojas were the faces Lee knew. And so were those of Harry, Vin, and Chico.

Chico’s body was bruised and bloody from the numerous hooves that had taken him down, ridden over him, and stomped the life out of him as he tried to block the riders from reaching the unaware villagers behind him. Vin had been shot through the neck and by the blood extending from his hands to his forearms, he had spent his final moments trying to stem the flow. And Harry—

Harry’s body was riddled with gunfire. If Lee had cared to count, he was positive he would have found no less than twelve bullet holes, every one of them with a small fountain of blood, every one of them taken for Lee.

But not for Lee’s incompetence. No, Lee had been showcasing his aptitude at the moment Harry had been shot and it was not displacement from the present that had made Harry do what he did. Lee had no sure way of knowing, but he had a very strong hunch that Harry had seen more promise in Lee and had greater faith in Lee’s chances of survival over his own. Already bleeding and dying, Harry had known that he would be of little use from that point on and had given his all to ensure Lee escaped the cantina to continue contributing to the battle. It was a tactical decision and not one given because Harry pitied Lee—not that Lee felt any better about that revelation.

Lee had contributed a few more bullets to kill a few more men but he doubted his kills had been the deciding factor. He still had no idea how they had won but he knew it was not from the men he killed while crouching behind a wall. That would give rise to the belief that Harry’s sacrifice had been wasted, but Lee could not live with that sentiment and so he told himself that Harry’s selfless act had paved the way for Lee to come to Britt’s aid, that Britt had made a greater difference in that he had killed their intended target.

Only, Lee could not be sure that it had been Calvera Britt had used his last two bullets on. Lee had no clear memory on that front and Britt had been unsure himself and so Lee would have to wait for someone else to tell him where they had found Calvera’s body— _if_ they had found Calvera’s body. Knowing that the man could still be alive set Lee’s blood to boil.

Not after everything. Not after their losses. If that bastard was still out there breathing in fresh air…

He could not afford to allow the unknown to overtake the present just now. If Calvera was still alive, there was absolutely nothing Lee could do in this state and so he would have to attend to matters here, within reach. He occupied himself with observing Harry’s wide-open eyes. No one had seen fit to close them, leaving Lee to move forward on his knees to do the deed.

A light cough made Lee reach for his gun before remembering that he couldn’t move his right arm. In the hesitation and reevaluation it took to try and grab it with his left, he was able to come to his senses and recognize that there was no immediate danger, though the fact that he had such a strong reaction to something as innocent as a cough told him that he had a long road ahead of him to full mental recovery.

The cough had come from Britt who was now awake, his face cast in haunting shadows from the lantern and moonlight playing across his features.

What could he say? What could either of them say? They had lost more than just blood today and it would be a long time for the consequences of this battle to fade away. Never had the odds been so great, the likelihood of failure so high, the number of companions lost so severe. Whatever Britt must be feeling, it had to be the same as the awful, empty sensation in the pit of Lee’s stomach.

Deciding it was best to break the silence and find out the extent of Britt’s injury, Lee began, “How’d you even get this far?”

“Might be that I crawled,” said Britt in a weary, wheezy, and pained voice.

“And you didn’t try to crawl back?”

“Couldn’t get back up even if I wanted to. The effort took it all out’ve me.”

“Not the easiest thing to wake up to,” said Lee in regards to the bodies beside Britt but Britt shook his head.

“They were already here.”

That seemed to be an extreme form of self-chastising that Lee found to be unhealthy. He did not begrudge Britt the chance to rest when he could but he could have stayed where he had originally been placed or found quite literally anywhere else to sleep and he chose to make his bed beside a line of cadavers as if it was now his duty to stand vigil over them.

“How does this help anyone?” Lee asked him delicately.

“Figured it would save the poor soul who had to move me a trip if I died right here.”

Lee had never found a joke less funny but when he realized Britt had not meant for it to be taken as a joke, he sat forward on his knees to have a closer look at the wound in Britt’s shoulder. It had been bandaged tightly enough that Lee ran the risk of ruining all the hard work put into it if he went poking and prodding about.

“What did they tell you when they mended it?”

“I wasn’t conscious. Woke up and it was dark.”

“And what do you feel now?”

“Feel like I’m dyin’,” said Britt simply and for someone who did not partake in the melodramatic, that was an intense thing for him to admit. “Feel like I’ll be dead come mornin’ just like the rest’ve ‘em.”

“Not all of them. O’Reilly’s back there,” Lee jerked his head back toward the cantina.

Britt followed his direction and when his eyes found the body, he sighed. “Did he have a chance?”

“None. You have one yet.”

Whether Britt intended for the sound that came out of his throat to be a laugh or a scoff, it was difficult to say, but the intent was there that he didn’t believe in the optimism of Lee’s statement.

“Isn’t that what you want?” asked Lee.

“I didn’t wanna have to see this.” Britt glanced down at Harry and the others. “Not again.”

“Again?”

“Too many,” Britt mumbled.

As a gunman, Britt would have been used to seeing this sort of thing so often that he had become numb to it but if Lee was any judge of Britt’s character, he believed that this last battle had been too much, the casualties too great—or too personal.

“The worst I’ve seen as well, if it’s any consolation. If you want to make it worse, you can drop dead beside them all and that’s not an invitation.”

“No, I’ll tell you the worst part: worst part is before, I never cared. It didn’t matter who I was buryin’. Just a person, another stranger, and never a friend. Family once, but when you’re that young, you don’t understand the consequences. I didn’t wanna be the one to have to do it this time, not if I knew’ em.”

“I don’t think either of us is in a position to pick up a spade right now.”

“Maybe not, but I’ll do it anyway. I owe them that.”

If Britt was prepared to put his own health at further risk just to honor the dead, Lee had no excuse, especially not when one of these men was the sole reason for Lee’s survival. That weighed on him, the knowledge that Harry Luck had died a hero’s death and no one knew. No one knew what Harry had done in his final moments except Lee and that was a burden he could not bear alone, so he confided in Britt. He recounted every last detail that he could remember to do Harry’s memory justice and when he finished, Britt had something akin to pride on his face.

“That was his decision,” he said firmly. “You can’t fault yourself for another man’s choices. He didn’t know you half as well as I do and he still made that choice for his own reasons. You gotta admire a man like that.”

“Is it admiration or pity? Can you admire a man who’s dead because of you?”

“I do,” said Britt. “My pa.”

Lee knew that was all he was going to get from Britt, as the latter did not care to share details of his childhood nor indeed anything from before Lee had known him. This simple and quick peek into Britt’s life was still an intimate detail that Lee felt honored to know even if it was jarring and unpleasant news. 

“Anyway, I think Harry’d already made up his mind to go out in that fashion,” continued Britt. “As much as he put up talk against it, this was how he preferred to die if he had to. It’s how I planned to go, if you’d let me.”

It took a moment for Lee to figure out if he was being berated or teased, if Britt was calling Lee’s inability to commit a mercy killing or just making a moot point.

“Do you resent me for that?” asked Lee.

“If there’s no lasting damage, no.”

Humor was not one of Britt’s strong suits and his sarcasm was often difficult to pick up on but Lee did not take his comment personally.

“Were you ready?”

It was a question Lee knew the answer to, but he had to ask anyway for all the good it did. Britt heaved a sigh which was about all he was capable of doing at this stage but Lee took that for confirmation anyway. 

“Weren’t you?” he asked Lee in return. “We always have to be. Hope to win, expect to die.”

At many points throughout his life, Lee would have said yes, the most recent being in the seconds after Harry had ordered him to run but sitting beside Britt waiting to die had not been one of those moments. He had not been ready or willing, but he would have swallowed a bullet if he had to, if there was nothing else. As Britt had said: the life of a gunman was fleeting and peculiar in that one was always hoping to win the fight but not necessarily always hoping to keep his life as a reward.

“And now?”

“Just waitin’, one way or another.”

And what a cheerful notion that was, being told that Britt wanted no help and would let nature decide whether or not he died right here in the dirt or survived his wounds. The blatant disregard for his own future, the willingness to hand it over to the unknown with no attempt to take ownership or responsibility for it was not in any way something Lee associated with his friend and it was unsettling to say the least.

Before he could summon a response, the weather took a drastic turn for the worse. For mid September in the heart of Mexico, it was an unnatural chill that descended upon the village accompanied by the sort of bitter wind that sucked the warmth from the bones. Of the two of them, Britt would be more used to this type of weather as a born and bred Nebraska man but he had resided south of the Mason-Dixon line for more years than he had not and remaining out in the cold would do him no favors now.

“We’d best get indoors,” said Lee.

“I would, but I used up any strength I had left in talkin’. It’s worse than it looks.” Britt fidgeted and scratched at the cloth tied around his neck to support his arm but even that required more energy than he had to give.

Lee shivered and contemplated how long it would take him to enlist help to bring Britt under cover.

“You go on inside. I’ll be just fine right here,” Britt told him modestly.

Absolutely not. Lee was not about to go find a warmer and more comfortable cot to rest on only to wake up in a few hours’ time to find Britt had joined the ranks of the deceased beside him. He marched himself lopsidedly back to the cantina where unused sheets were still sitting in a pile on one of the tables. Tucking the lot of them under his arm, he came back to where Britt was looking to be on the verge of unconsciousness and placed two sheets over him before stretching one out next to him.

Ignoring Britt’s disapproving stare, Lee lay down on his back beside Britt and pulled a final sheet around himself. Only when he finally found the most comfortable patch of dirt to lie on did he realize just how unfulfilling that long sleep he had just awoken from actually was. He was still fatigued as if he had just seen the completion of the battle and now that he at least knew where Britt was, he could sleep.

But he had one last pressing matter to attend to…

Quietly in case Britt had already passed out again, Lee asked, “You said if we were still breathing at the end, you’d tell me.”

Silence, another heavy sigh, and then an answer. “Does it still matter to you enough to wanna know?”

He had his answer already. Britt had given him that answer and proven it several times over in his actions during the battle.

“No, I don’t suppose it does.”

/ /

One would think that with no more foreseeable opponents on the horizon, Lee would finally be able to pass one night of dreamless sleep now that he had relieved himself of his self-doubt. However, the elimination of the immediate threat did not alleviate Lee’s fears which manifested once again in the form of nightmares where he found himself helpless, useless, and hopeless. This realm of imagination found him crippled as well as frightened and he was powerless to defend himself. He could not use his right hand, he wasn’t fast enough, and faster men came for him. Only this time there were consequences far beyond his own mortality. For the first time, he dreamed of others, those few people who had been his family a lifetime ago. His inability to defend himself cost them their lives once again. 

It also cost him the lives of those around him, his fellow gunmen and friends. Some part of his brain informed him that he already knew some of them were dead but that did not stop him from having to relive their demise. And then death came for Chris, it came for Britt, and left Lee to watch for eternity. Death was repetitive, consistent, and endless. He would see them alive and then watch them die while he did nothing, petrified in isolating fear of being next.

Turning from the scene, Lee screamed into the mist of nothingness to let him out, to kill him or release him for he could not stand to watch it happen one more time. He heard the shot that would signify Britt’s death but he didn’t look and as a result, a heavy hand fell upon his injured shoulder and squeezed. The grip was painful as the fingers pinched and dug into his skin and then Lee was whirled around to stare into the cloudy dead eyes of Britt as the cadaver opened its mouth and spoke.

“Wake up.”

He sat up boltright and his arm protested his movement. Checking his shoulder, he found that the hand was still there, attached to a body that was still warm and still alive. The night was at its darkest just before dawn but Lee could just make out the shape of Britt’s head from above as Britt maintained his grasp on Lee’s shoulder, though now with a comforting weight instead of a horrifying clamminess.

“You’re okay.”

Lee waited for his eyes to adjust to the night and when they did, he could see that by Britt’s posture and tone of voice, he had not been awoken by Lee’s nightmare—he had never been asleep to begin with. His body would be in full revolt against him right now but he was fighting any possibility of nodding off to avoid the vulnerability that came with it. After waking from the initial process of having his wounds seen to, he feared to let sleep come for him again for reasons of his own. Sleep was second nature to Britt, so what on earth did he have to fear in allowing his body much needed rest?

“Good?” asked Britt shortly as Lee sat up further.

“Yeah…yeah, I’m good,” said Lee more as an afterthought. He wasn’t, not by a long shot, but he didn’t have the energy or the mindset to discuss it right now and especially not when he had woken right next to a line of bodies. All he could do was wrap the top sheet around himself and watch Britt trying to combat his growing urge to sleep.

The first peek of dawn came in the form of a thin white line on the horizon and the black of night gradually transitioned into a heavy blue that eventually gave way to a collection of red, pink, and yellow splashes when the sun put in its first appearance of the day. The sunlight found Lee and Britt in their little alcove, bringing warmth but no relief in it. 

And still Britt had not slept. He looked positively skeletal in the early morning light and as terrible as Lee felt, as desperate he was for a proper sleep on a proper bed, he needed to first find adequate accommodations for Britt. 

The villagers had been up and about before sunrise but none of them had approached Lee and Britt, most likely because they had not thought to look for the living among the dead. It wasn’t until Hilario and another man came bearing O’Reilly’s body that Lee and Britt were finally acknowledged and then it was only to call for one of the more experienced villagers to have a look at their wounds and ensure neither of them was in immediate danger. With that relatively clean bill of health, Lee worked Britt’s left arm around his shoulders and with his backside to the wall to assist him, stood up with all of Britt’s weight hanging off of him.

“Not…walking,” said Britt groggily. “Can’t.”

“I know.”

Surprised at his own strength, Lee managed to drag Britt over to the wall beside the stretch of land that was currently being prepared for digging. It was not the most ethical place to make Britt finally get some sleep, but Lee knew it was where he would want to be to watch the graves being dug. Apparently Chris had also had this same idea, for he had set out several blankets for Britt to rest on and was just finishing up when Lee arrived on the verge of collapse from supporting the equivalent of his body weight.

Chris relieved him and set Britt in his preferred position, back to the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. The scene was inharmoniously familiar to Lee who had seen many people place their loved ones in a position of comfort, tending to their every need when they knew the end was coming and close.

He pulled Chris aside to ask, “What are his chances at recovery?”

Chris shrugged but not without concern. “I had a look at that bullet hole myself after it was stitched up and it’s my opinion that with proper rest, he’ll be just fine but half of the road to recovery is up to him. If he doesn’t want to, he won’t, and from the looks of him now, he doesn’t want to.”

 _He will._ Lee would make damn sure of it. Britt had always been certain to tell Lee that a man’s business was his own and that Britt would never force a decision on him but Lee could turn those words back around to apply them to Britt and he figured now was the time to start.

Lee took a seat beside Britt and together they watched the farmers begin to carry the individual bodies to the burial site. Britt had mentioned that he would assist in laying the dead to rest whether or not his body could expend the energy but it seemed that he had neglected his body’s needs long enough, for he did not last half a dozen minutes before his eyelids closed. Another two minutes and his head fell gently onto Lee’s shoulder and Lee did his best to support the weight for as long as he could.

He alone watched the farmers take one body at a time over to where around twenty markers had been etched into the dirt and begin to dig according to the dimensions of the corpse. The backdrop to their hard work was in the fitting image of a bonfire where more volunteers were taking Calvera’s men to be burned.

And there—there was no mistaking the red tunic this time when Lee was completely composed and aware of his surroundings. Britt’s final two shots had done their job well. The last Lee saw of the man who had nearly become his killer was that fiery red shirt.

Britt twitched beside him and his legs kicked unconsciously. It was not a violent fit or even a particularly visible one, but he was definitely experiencing some sort of vision in his dreams that caused this involuntary movement and Lee shook him by the shoulder once, twice, and then the fit ceased.

He was only able to withstand an hour of watching the farmers digging each grave before he found himself picking up a spare spade and limping over to where Harry’s body lay beside a hole yet to be dug. Britt had laid claim to this task already but he would not begrudge Lee the chance to complete it now.

Leaning his weight on his bad leg, Lee lifted his left leg and dug his heel down onto the top of the spade to push it into the soft soil. His leg was not overly fond of the movement but he ignored the pain and continued on about his work. No one spoke to him, but for that he was grateful, for he didn’t think he could muster words just now when his mind was set to the task ahead and preparing for the inevitable end to it.

Clouds shifted overhead, the sun beat down onto the back of his neck, and blisters had opened, popped, and bled all over his hand but he continued to dig. He made half the progress as others in twice the time but he would allow no one to help him purely out of stubbornness than to serve some greater purpose.

An hour and a half later judging by the position of the sun, he admired his hard work and effort in the form of the three foot deep grave he had dug while wondering how he was going to climb out in his current state once he had reached his goal depth.

Chris squatted down in front of him and offered him a canteen. Lee took a swig, dumped some water on his face, and handed it back without comment which prompted Chris to grasp his uninjured shoulder. “You can let go now.”

No, he couldn’t. If he let go, he would never find his way back again. As much as he wanted to release it all, he had to hold on, and he told Chris as much with what he meant to be a stern expression but he was almost positive that he was staring daggers at the man instead.

Chris held out Lee’s gloves, recovered from where he had been prepared to die and Lee pulled the left one on with some difficulty. It was a small saving grace to now have some protection against the rough wood of his shovel and his skin.

Chris left him to his own devices as Lee suspected and hoped he would and returned to helping the grave-digging effort for the other fallen gunmen.

Raindrops landed on Lee’s exposed brow and he cast his eyes skyward to see the gathering clouds grow dark and heavy with the promise of a good cleansing. However, the rain would ensure that any bodies not yet buried would begin to smell and so powered with new vigor, Lee doubled his efforts to finish digging before rain became a flood. The dirt was on its way to becoming mud when he finished and thunder rumbled in the distance.

He reached over to where Harry’s body lay and pulled it toward him by the sleeve. Harry had been a robust man in life with an even larger personality, but he was still much heavier than Lee and moving him with one non-dominant hand was a daunting task. He was just beginning to think that he would have to drop the body unceremoniously in the mud when he blinked up into the rain to see Britt kneeling at Harry’s feet.

Britt pushed while Lee continued to pull until only Harry’s legs remained outside the hole and then lowered them one by one. It was not neat and not clean and not the sort of burial Harry deserved, but it was all Lee had to offer and he would entrust this burden to no one else. Placing Harry’s hands across his chest and his hat atop his hands, Lee went to the edge of the grave to climb out.

It was certainly on Britt’s mind to offer Lee a hand out but with the addition of the mud and Britt looking like he was about to keel over, Lee did not want to chance it so he settled for laying his upper body flat on the ground and then kicking his way out whilst shimmying forward all while trying to keep his wounds clean if not dry. Then, covered in muck and smelling like mildew, Lee once again took up his spade and began to replace the earth he had just spent the better part of the morning shifting.

He did not look down at the face or the body until it was completely covered and only the outline remained. He had looked his last upon the man the night prior and it would do no good to linger on it now. When the last shovelful of mud had been packed into place, he dropped to his knees, pulled his glove off with his teeth, and let the rain soak into the open blisters.

It seemed imperative to say something to honor the man they had just committed to the earth but no words came to Lee, not that he would have spoken them aloud even if he had any. He had no strength to open his mouth at all, much less say something to commemorate his friend and fully planned to sit out the remainder of the day in the mud beside the grave but one look at Britt beside him made him make the long journey to his feet and then pull Britt to his.

There was still work to be done, one more man to take into account even with four of them dead. The man hanging off of Lee’s shoulder was all that mattered now and if he would not put forth the effort to help himself, Lee would have to do it for him.

What had once been Vin’s room was still vacant for their use and closest to the burial site and so this was where Lee deposited Britt. Soaked, muddy, and incoherent, Britt made no objection. He was all but comatose when Lee draped a blanket over him.

Lee had not yet had a proper look at him since the sun came up and now that he did, the gravity of Britt’s injuries hit him like an anvil to the chest. The fact of the matter was that Britt—however much his skills said otherwise—was human and very much mortal. Even if he had only ever talked about dying, even if he had admitted just hours ago that he suspected he might, the possibility of it becoming reality was something Lee had been able to look past up until this moment. Fresh from a rather emotional and draining burial, Lee knew he was more mentally vulnerable than he had been at any stage since stepping foot in this village.

He needed a release: a scream, something to break, anything. A moment to be the human he was.

Stepping out into the open space behind Vin’s room, he looked about and saw that he was quite alone and he could hold back the storm no longer. His legs simply gave out on him and he dropped to his knees, trembling and shuddering to draw breath. He hugged his stomach and bent double as he waited for this all to pass, only it didn’t. He had so much inner turmoil to expel that the rain had nearly washed all the mud from his clothes by the time he was able to breathe properly again. The tears were silent when they finally made an appearance as he came to terms with his new responsibility.

His sole concern for the past two decades had been himself and only within the last few years had it also been his horse but his solitary lifestyle was over. He had already chosen Britt over himself and at this very moment, he was bidding his old life farewell, perhaps the life of a gunman entirely but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

For now, he had someone else besides himself to keep alive and never had he had that responsibility for someone he knew, respected, and cared for.

He wiped at his face, not that it made any difference in the rain, and quietly let himself back inside.

/ /

Three weeks had felt like three years for the amount of nothingness that occurred. They only stayed until Britt was well enough to ride and even that ample amount of time seemed too little and yet seemed endless. It was Lee’s own personal purgatory with nothing to occupy his mind but the thought of what he would do if Britt’s will to live suddenly conceded to the stronger wish for an end to it all. 

Despite their victory, despite Lee’s conquering of so much that he had feared, he was terrified at the prospect of having to face the aftermath alone. If he did not have that one companion to share in his moral grief, he simply could not continue. At this point he was not sure if he would fold in on himself and let his mind go to waste or if he would shoot himself in the mouth but he would not be riding out of this village without Britt, of that he was damn certain.

To combat the restlessness, he made Britt walk the length of the village every morning and then spent the remainder of his day either sitting in the bell tower or traversing the nearby creeks or else polishing his revolver in silence. It seemed pointless to keep it this clean if he couldn’t even use it but old habits died hard.

Britt caught him testing his right arm one afternoon and cautioned him to not upset it or he would delay the recovery process.

“Keep that up and you’ll never draw again,” Britt warned.

“I was resigned to that fact when I first felt the bullet go through my elbow,” replied Lee glumly. “Besides, I think this was my last assignment. Bullet shattered the bone and when it finally heals, it won’t be the same.”

“Still have your left arm, don’t you?”

Yes, he had his left arm and an equally capable hand, something he had discovered in desperation when his right hand was no longer available to him. It would not be a matter of completely relearning everything, only readjusting to do what he already knew how to. He doubted he could be as fast or efficient with his left hand, but he would discipline himself to learn if only to give himself peace of mind. If it kept the demons at bay by waking in the dead of night and drawing with his left hand, knowing he could still do it if his life depended upon it, that was more than enough. 

“What about you? How good are you with your left?”

“Just as. Just got into the habit of usin’ my right.”

“I don’t believe that for one second.”

“Believe it when you see it.”

“Which will be when?”

“When I need to.”

That was fair; Britt didn’t show off for the sake of saving or proving his reputation. His skills were bought and paid for and not for show, even to make a point but if he actually was as accurate with both hands as he boasted, there would be nothing to keep him from picking up exactly where he had left off before this job.

Lee, on the other hand, _had_ only one hand for the time being and though he was clumsily learning how to function by achieving the most basic and mundane tasks with his left hand, he did not have high hopes for his own future in the blood business. He had two decades’ worth of practice with his right hand and three weeks of practice with his left and was doubtful he would make it another two decades as a quickdraw if he didn’t pick up the skill soon.

This was the life he knew and he had never even considered being anything else but a gunman. He could not see himself tending bar in a saloon or standing behind the counter of the pharmacy or plowing fields for no one’s benefit but his own. His line of work was the least useful, least fulfilling and completely self-serving.

And perhaps that was the problem, the answer to why he had turned out the way he did and why he was so fearful of the dark, of any sudden sound, of his own shadow. His job had taught him to fear everything and be ready to kill without hesitation and that was no way for any man to live so a career change might just indeed be the order of the day if he didn’t want to be a withered wreck of a man in another ten years if he lived that long.

/ /

The day of their departure finally came near the end of October but Lee found himself dreading that day the closer it loomed. He had seen the worst of humanity in this village and found the best in himself so there were equal reasons to want to go and stay but the strongest argument for staying was that this was the longest Lee had remained in one place since boyhood. Never had he stayed anywhere more than two weeks and here he was almost ten weeks later still in the same place, still in this miserably poor little village that had a quaint charm about it.

His friend and companions were buried here. He’d sunk to his lowest point here. He’d had horrifying, soul-destroying nightmares here. But it felt oddly like home now and he had not had one of those since his own had been taken out from under him. However, as much as this place invited him to stay, the argument for leaving was that he could see no future for himself here. He had already refused the life of a farmer, so what else could be gained by staying? To protect these people on the off-chance that another rabble of bandits tried to bully them into submission? The chances of that happening weren’t likely now that the villagers had the courage and the means to defend their own land and even if Lee did stay for that purpose, there was no guarantee that he would be able to help in his crippled state.

And so he would move on, only this time, there was a certain finality to leaving this place. North of the border, there was always the chance that he would return to one town or another but that didn’t seem like the case here. When he left this village behind, he would not be coming back.

It was difficult trying to keep these thoughts to himself as he readied his horse for departure while the villagers gathered to bid them farewell. Such forlorn faces he saw looking back at him which told him that either they were equally upset to see him, Britt, and Chris go, or they all had suddenly gained the ability to look into his mind and were privy to his current doubts. Uncomfortable as always being at the center of attention, Lee turned his back to them and belted Major’s saddlebags down.

As the elder of the village, it was the old man’s duty to send them on their way but he had few words for them; words of gratitude, of well-wishes, of good fortune. The look he spared for Lee was of a different sort, though. It was penetrating, knowing, and sympathetic. This man had lost many friends in the battle for their home and Lee had lost four but it was not a measure of loss in numbers but a measure of loss in faith and humanity. It was the most difficult task to date for Lee to maintain some semblance of hope for his future but he held on to it for Britt and for himself and the old man sent his heart out to Lee and the long journey to healing ahead.

Tipping his hat in farewell, Lee turned around and stood before his horse, knowing he couldn’t mount on his own, one-handed and with an injured leg. 

“I gotcha,” said a voice behind him.

Lee stuck his left foot in the stirrup, grasped the saddle horn in his left hand, and stepped as high as he could straight up. Britt stood at his back to help steer his leg into the saddle and once settled into it, Lee felt an uncommon sensation of vertigo. Three weeks on only his own two feet had made the experience of horse riding somewhat foreign to him and he hoped Major would not sense that unease within him and buck.

On the contrary, though, Major did sense his hesitation and lifted his head higher so Lee could comb his fingers through the black mane. The motion calmed him and rooted him in the memory of how to ride. He backed Major up a pace or two until they were up alongside Britt and his horse.

Lee tightened the muscles in his inner thighs and leaned over to hold out his hand for Britt to grab on his way up. Wincing, Britt managed to make it into his own saddle and straightened up somewhat winded. What a sight they made, climbing with a struggle and numerous wounds onto their horses as if they’d never ridden before.

The old man lifted his hand and the villagers raised theirs in unison to send them on their way. Lee tried hard not to look at any one of them individually. Their faces were more familiar to him than any he had seen in any town he had passed through. This village was known to him like the parts of his revolver. And he had to say goodbye.

Urging their horses into a very light trot, Lee, Britt, and Chris kept their heads high to respectfully acknowledge the villagers. Lee let himself fall to the rear as they came upon the outskirts of the village. He pulled Major to a halt beside the graves, now invisible but for the markers with the names of the fallen. Harry’s was closest, close enough for Lee to lean sideways and touch the top of the crucifix if he wanted but it would not make him feel the slightest bit better and would take effort that he didn’t have, so he refrained.

Since he had held his peace at the official burial, it only seemed proper for Lee to say something now but he was at as much at a loss for words now as he had been then. All he could do was touch the brim of his hat in a sign of respect that the intended couldn’t see.

“He knows,” said Britt as he pulled his horse up alongside Lee. “They all do.” He tipped his hat as well.

Lee said a final silent farewell and thanks to Harry Luck and turned Major away. He was tempted to look back just once more to get his last glimpse of the village but it would only make his departure that much more difficult and make the sting of leaving cut that much deeper, so he didn’t. He firmly kept his sights ahead as he rode abreast with Britt and Chris.

Britt did not let the silence stretch too long before asking Lee, “Where do you go from here?” 

“I don’t know yet but if you’re still around, I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

And it seemed that thanks to Lee’s determination and effort to make his friend mentally well again and repurpose his life, Britt did plan to be around for quite a long time which was good enough for Lee.


End file.
